Sending Unsolicited Email Is A Crime: Why Spammers Are Our Enemy

Spamming is a term used to refer to unsolicited or unwarranted mail (snail, fax, or electronic). Email spam, probably the most widespread of  spam cases worldwide, springs from the desire of certain individuals and companies to promote products or services via least-cost means or to simply steal PC information and wreak havoc on Internet users’ online lives.

Majority of email spam is annoying, while the rest are downright dangerous. While there are those that send hordes of unsolicited mail, in the hopes of getting themselves known to consumers who would otherwise not give them a second look (and are mainly harmless), there are those that seek to infiltrate, steal information, and even spread malware. And because barriers against spam are relatively weak, given the fact that spammers are, technically, two steps ahead of anti-spam makers, the number of spam makers continues to grow by the multitude.

How Does Spam Happen?

Reports show that around 90 billion spam emails have been sent every day as of February 2007, the bulk of which come from Asian developing countries, but with the United States as the largest source. Where the spam emails exactly come from is difficult to track, especially as hardcore spammers take advantage of free email services, like Hotmail and Yahoo, to maintain multiple source accounts, which they can easily abandon in the event ISPs attempt to shut them down.

Spammers collect massive numbers of email addresses on the Internet, either through web sites, personal listings, online email groups, and the like. These addresses are then flooded with huge amounts of promotional or destructive email, with some even sent more than five times per day, under different guises and subject headings.

It is true that not all of the email addresses posted on the Internet are active and legitimate. However, this doesn’t pose great risks on the spam senders, because all it takes for them to spread gargantuan numbers of mail is time to manage email accounts and an Internet connection. An individual living in a poor country has the ability to send spam even if he is accessing the Net only from a neighborhood Internet café. In bigger spamming entities, persons are replaced with machines, which automatically collects and sends spam every minute of every day without much supervision.

Penalties For Spammers

Not many laws are in place and are even strict enough to deal with unsolicited mail, primarily because the inner workings of the Internet remain unclear to many. Majority of the spam cases have been dealt with privately, or under state regulations. However, often it has just been ignored and “charged to experience.”

With the birth of the CAN-Spam Act, which the U.S. Congress enacted in 2003 to curb the sending of unwanted email to any device without permission from the recipient, many states have found uniform ways to deal with the problem. Just recently, so-called Spam King Robert Soloway was arrested for several counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. He faces over 65 years in jail and a $250,000 fine if proven guilty.

Regular spammers could face up to a year in jail, depending on the gravity of the offense, and face relative fines. Spam is also a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy of Internet Service Providers, which restricts how websites or online networks operate.

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