Posted by Virus Bulletin on Jul 28, 2004
Prosecutions made in Denmark, USA and India.
The new year saw a flurry of reports of spammers being brought to justice, with prosecutions being made in Denmark, the USA and India.
A Danish businessman was convicted last month (January) of having sent more than 10,000 unsolicited emails. In Denmark the practice of sending unsolicited emails has been illegal since June 2000 under the Marketing Practices Act. Danish authorities issued the man with a 400,000 Dkr fine (approximately £37,000) - a record fine for this kind of offence in Denmark.
In the US, meanwhile, a middle-aged Ohio woman who found herself in hot water after she spammed an off-duty FBI computer crime expert, was sentenced to 46 months in prison. Helen Carr, aged 55, was operating a 'phishing' scam - both Carr and her accomplice pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge, having used spam as a means to elicit credit card details from hundreds of unwitting recipients.
Finally, in India, despite there being no laws governing the use of email, a New Delhi judge has ordered McCoy Infosystems Private Ltd to stop sending unsolicited bulk email to any user of the state-owned ISP VSN Limited (VSNL ). The prosecutors built their case around the claim that, by sending large amounts of unsolicited email to VSNL's users, the spamming company was 'trespassing' on VSNL's property and breaching the privacy of VSNL and its subscribers
Posted on 28 July 2004 by Virus Bulletin