To my way of thinking, there are four quite separate issues; is it legal?; is it ethical?; will you get away with it?; and is there any point doing it? I can't see how anyone could defend the claim that such information was fairly obtained, so I would say it certainly breaches the EEC directive. Given that innocent parties will have all the more spam e-mail as a result, I'm not sure I could defend it ethically either? Will you get away with it? Probably. Is there any point doing it? Probably not. To my way of thinking, those people who sell bulk e-mail lists already have a reputation slightly lower than that of pond life; and those buying them (the anatomical enlargement posse) really don't care. I prefer to take the moral high ground, and rise above it all, by simply deleting all spam e-mail unread.
Antoinette Carter
IT Support/Data Protection Officer
British Tourist Authority
Direct Tel: 020 8563 3191
-----Original Message-----
From: "Trent,Tim" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 19 August 2002 13:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: SPAM vengeance: A naughty idea?
Those email seeking robots that surf the net are a pain. A total pain.
They scan arbitrary web sites and search for "@" signs and harvest anything
that appears to be an email address into pseudo email mailing lists which
they sell in bulk on the net. Several people make their business living in
this way, not considering the content of the lists, just using bulk email
techniques. I suppose this is why I get emails regularly offering to
enlarge male and female portions of my anatomy.
Chatting this weekend with a friend who has a personal web site he and I
were discussing SPAM. He has a way of getting his own back. He has created
a public page on a web site containing about 2MB of fake email addresses
based on an idea he saw at
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/04/18/sacrificial_spam/index.html.
So far so good. No data protection issues there. But he knows I look after
Data Protection.
This weekend he asked me, and I am asking you: "If I add email addresses
from inbound spam, some of those imbeciles will have put their own
addresses. Others will have faked the address of real people, either on
purpose or by accident. So I may be holding data capable of identifying an
individual, which may or may not have been fairly obtained, which will be
displayed (albeit in 3 point type) on a web page 2MB in size and pretty
indecipherable, and which will be "freely" available to spam email
harvesting robots." What will happen, of course is that the spammers in the
list, if genuine, will get periodic offers to enlarge anatomical parts etc,
the faked but genuine people will get similar missives, and the originator
of the spam will get his reputation lowered if he sells the list of fakes,
plus his email server choked with bounces (there are in excess of 150,000
fake addresses on the list anyway.
To make life the more complex, the web site is hosted in Austin Texas, USA.
Now, is this just a naughty idea, guaranteed to aggravate the maximum number
of spammers, or is it against the EEC directive and various national laws?
_____________________________________________________________
Tim Trent
Chief Privacy Officer EMEA
> Gartner
EMEA Marketing, Tamesis, The Glanty, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom,
TW20 9AW
Switchboard +44 (0)1784 431 611, Direct Line +44 (0)1784 267 335, Mobile +44
(0)7710 126 618
Visit our home on the web: http://www.gartner.com
The opinions expressed in this message are my own, and may or may not
reflect those of my employer. They are expressed as a part of the
discussion on the JISCMail mailing list on data protection and for no other
purpose. They have no legal standing and are offered as part of informed
and informal discussion. They may NOT be attributed to Gartner in any way.
Any personal data provided is provided expressly for use of discussions on
the JISCMail Data Protection Discussion list. Under the UK Data Protection
Act 1998 I expressly forbid any individual or organisation to make
commercial use of my data published either on the email list or in the
archives of that or other lists whether this message appears or not. This
includes messages already published in the archives.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All archives of messages are stored permanently and are
available to the world wide web community at large at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html
If you wish to leave this list please send the command
leave data-protection to [log in to unmask]
All user commands can be found at : -
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/user-manual/summary-user-commands.htm
(all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
________________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs SkyScan
service. For more information on a proactive anti-virus service working
around the clock, around the globe, visit http://www.messagelabs.com
________________________________________________________________________
The information contained in this e mail and its attachments is intended only for the
above-mentioned recipient/s and, unless otherwise stated, copyright of any material
transmitted shall remain vested in this company. The contents may also be confidential
and/or protected by legal privilege.
If this is mail has come to you in error, please contact the sender immediately to
let them know. You are not entitled to make any use of it whatsoever.
We believe, but do not warrant, that this e mail is virus free and you should take full
responsibility for virus checking.
We reserve the right to monitor all e mail communications passing through our internal
and external networks.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All archives of messages are stored permanently and are
available to the world wide web community at large at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html
If you wish to leave this list please send the command
leave data-protection to [log in to unmask]
All user commands can be found at : -
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/user-manual/summary-user-commands.htm
(all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|