Virginia introduces toughest-ever spam penalties

Posted on 1 May 2003 at 12:52

The US State of Virginia has enacted the toughest anti-spam laws yet, threatening spammers with seizure of assets earned from junk mail and up to five years in prison.

Home to a number of major Internet businesses, including AOL, Virginia is one of the busiest points on the Web, but while other US states have anti-spam laws, none go so far as this.

Governor Mark Warner explained, 'We want to be able to put out not only a potential criminal violation with the felony but also to seize the proceeds from this illegal activity - their cars, boats, airplanes, homes.'

The law aims to curb commercial bulk emailing, and is targeted particularly at individuals or organisations who send over 10,000 messages at a time or make over $1,000 from a single spam campaign.

The law also bans tricks of the trade that spammers use to hide their identities, such as forged email headers.

Earlier this week the Federal Trade Commission published a report of an examination of 1,000 randomly selected spam emails. It found that 33 per cent of junk-senders hide their true identities in the From line, sometimes claiming to be someone who has a legitimate relationship with the recipient. Ninety-six per cent of the spam claiming business and investment opportunities contained false information, as did 48 per cent of health services or products promotions and 47 per cent of travel and leisure spam. The report also found that most emails containing graphic pornographic images did not warn the recipient in the Subject line.

Although the new laws have been welcomed, anti-spam campaigners warned that without sufficient resources, they would not be particularly effective.

Other US states are considering other means of tackling the spam problem. Californian House of Representative' member Zoe Lofgren is planning to introduce legislation to provide rewards for individuals who help to locate or identify spammers.

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Author: Simon Aughton