Slashdot Mirror
SPAM - A Different Kind of Identity Theft?
bmooney28 asks: "After maintaining a single permanent email address through 8
years and five ISP's (via a forwarding service), I lost it all in a day. My first sign of trouble came when I found a message undeliverable email in my inbox containing hundreds of failed email addresses. Apparently, my email address had been pasted as the return address in a mass mailing similar to this
one sent to hundreds of random recipients. This process repeated a few times over the next day or so, effectively blacklisting my email address on various master lists and adding my address to thousands of random address books
(virus magnets). In the past, I have had a great deal of luck fighting off SPAM and other unwanted email via throwaway
email addresses and preemptive email filtering.
Now, the email address that I use to communicate with friends, former students,
and coworkers around the world is useless. Have any of you ever found yourself in a similar situation? Are there any legal steps that I could
take against this company?"
1) The litigious young american will call his lawyer and look into suing this company for fraud and slander/libel. Reap massive multi-million dollar judgment 5 years later.
2) The sane human being will get a new email address and tell all of his friends, family and other contacts that he's changed addresses.
Pick one. Do you maybe have legal recourse? IANAL, but yeah maybe. Think about what would happen if someone fraudulently used your home address or phone number.
On the other hand, how much is that email address really worth to you?
(note that if the answer to that last question actually has a real substantial dollar value attached to it, then you shouldn't be talking to slashdot, but a real attorney.)
My 9-year-old address has been forged in spam headers about 6 times. I'm guessing that around 150k spam messages have been sent with my email as the 'From' address. I haven't found my domain or my address to be on any blacklists as a result, and I've only gotten ONE reply from a spammee who couldn't tell that the email didn't really come from me.
I hate it, it sucks, etc. But it hasn't affected my legitimate use of the address.
Speaking of legal steps, I find it interesting that the people who are against making spam illegal are unusually quiet in this topic. They hate to admit that spam is truely evil, and sould be outlawed.
The scenario that happened to this guy happens EVERY DAY. There is no socially redeeming value to spam. It has to go. Contact your favorite government official of choice in whatever country you live in. Pressure them into outlawing spam. We must have the strong legal tools to bankrupt spammers.
Actually, I use some_string@example.com just to prevent this sort of thing.
Since example.com is not available for registration, no one gets hurt.