Two victories, a settlement and a reduction in spam

Despite there currently being no US laws regarding SMS spam.

With Microsoft achieving a $4 million court victory against spammer Daniel Khoshnood and his company Pointcom Inc., and the New York State reaching a rather less impressive $40,000 settlement in its case against Scott Richter, aka the 'Spam King', July was a fruitful month for legal action against spammers - and not only in the US.

Last month also saw the first court ruling based on the recently introduced Dutch anti-spam regulations.

Online job website NationaleVacaturebank.nl complained that employment broker CVbank had been sending job seekers' CVs to the companies advertising on its website, and giving the false impression that CVbank was somehow affiliated with the job website.

Although Dutch anti-spam regulations only cover unsolicited email sent to individual users (spam sent to businesses is unaffected), the judge was able to rule that CVbank had broken anti-spam regulations because, unknowingly, it had sent unsolicited email to one of NationaleVacaturebank.nl's advertisers who had given his private email address.

Meanwhile, Australian lawmakers had plenty to feel proud about when Spamhaus executives at the United Nation's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) meeting in Geneva revealed that they had observed a reduction in the activity of known Australian spammers since the introduction of Australia's strong anti-spam laws which came into effect in April 2004.

21 July 2004

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