Levies on Spam coming via organisation

Seth Brundle

Following what I believe to be a campaign of harassment by an organisation I kept receiving spam which was sent to me through some email redirects held by the organisation. By this stage I had been expelled from the organisation (without being told why)!
I demanded that it stop and for them to check all email accounts and remove any email address belonging to me. They did not and the spam kept coming.
Eventually after collecting over 3000 mails, I told them that I would introduce a levy per email received. Still nothing was done to stop it.
By the time I received 2500 'levied' mails, I sent on a copy of one of the mails. The response to this from the organisations chairman was that "I'm receiving as much crap as you are."
I received a further 1000 emails after that and before I managed to speak directly to a senior member of the organisation and he managed to put an end to it.

Am I entitled to charge them for the 'levied' emails?

jhegarty

Sounds like you are looking for legal advise to me (which will result in a ban)....

Seth Brundle

Im not.
Im wondering if anyone has ever heard of this being done before.
I will be seeing a solicitor abaout it but Im presuming that most solicitors would possibly not be familiar with this end of the law so I wanted some info on it if available.

Hal1

There is one way to stop spam and thats done by not entering your email addy on website feedbacks or for promotions. People should create a new email addy and forward mails from their trusted contacts only to the new account. After a month or so close the old account. Back on topic I dont know the (legalities) of this. Hopefully someone will have an answer to your question. Sorry mods this post doesnt belong here and delete if nessesary.

Seth Brundle

That option wasn't available to me.
Anyhow, what I am angry at is the fact that had all necessary information needed to act upon my demand but they didn't bother.
Has anyone ever heard of a situation whereby people were successfully charged for something like this.
Does anyone know of a good solicitor that would lean towards the IT industry?

dermot_sheehan

You're looking for SI 535 of 2003 which allows you to sue for damages for receiving unsolicited email.

What you're seeking to enforce here is a contract with a liquidated damages clause. The problem is you need to show that they agreed to the contract.

Victor

gabhain7 wrote:

What you're seeking to enforce here is a contract with a liquidated damages clause. The problem is you need to show that they agreed to the contract.

They had notice and continued with their activity.

Isn't it like walking into a buffet restaurant and starting to eat the food? And staying when the Maitre D' tells you the price?

haz

Victor wrote:

Isn't it like walking into a buffet restaurant and starting to eat the food? And staying when the Maitre D' tells you the price?

What amazes me is that most POP servers allow any user to send mail using any valid string of characters as the email address. That means that I, as a customer of someisp.ie can send email from haz@someisp.ie or from iamabastard@someisp.ie or even spoofingmyworstenemy@someisp.ie - but even worse is that every other POP server is open, so I can use spoofingmyworstenemy@hisown.isp or any other ISP's server.

I don't recommend trying this because it is illegal and traceable, but the simple fact is that a almost all spam is sent through open POP servers that don't perform the most minimal of checks (i.e. does this account exist, does it belong to this ISP and is the user at a credible IP address). Spam is a choice that ISPs have taken, and could easily eliminate if they (were made to) feel it was in their own interests.