The Latest in Junk Mail Technology

Midwest Telnet has the latest in junk mail crap. I got this mail the other day:

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Dear (my business email),

Midwest Tel Net's junk mail protection service has detected some
suspicious email messages since your last visit and directed them
to your Midwest Tel Net Message Center.

You can inspect your suspicious email at:

(urlurlurl...)

Suspicious email is kept for 14 days, after which it will be
automatically deleted. Please visit your Midwest Tel Net Message Center
to delete unwanted messages and check for valid email.

For help accessing and configuring your Midwest Tel Net Message Center:

http://www.postini.com/services/help.html

Thank You!

Midwest Tel Net
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They successfully replaced one junk mail with another. At least they got some advertisment out of it, eh?

i agree with you that it is positively annoying but steps are being taken.
read about it here:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/0...eut/index.html

i believe the latest statistics are about 30% of e-mail being sent today is classified as spam.

Yeah.... BellSouth is in the process of rolling out the same system right now. Frankly, I could do just fine without it because I'm clever enough to work the filters on my e-mail client. :)

My fear is that they'll trash some of my legitimate e-mail by mistake.

just away of hiding their crappy advertising as a way of helping you, not a bad ploy really heh

I know that in Washington state here, if you make it publicly availible (and reasonably easy to find) that your e-mail address is in Washington state, then you can sue unsolicited emailers! Apparently there are two cases where you can:

1) Spammers are based in Washington state
2) Spammers send to you and you are obviously in Washington State

I wonder how the law is panning out?

Actually, I've always been under the impression that spam would fall under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. It was intended to outlaw junk faxes, but I don't see any reason why spam wouldn't fall under the definition:

Quote:

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1. No person may...... Use a telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine.

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and then later:

Quote:

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The term "telephone facsimile machine" means equipment which has the capacity to transcribe text or images, or both, from paper into an electronic signal and to transmit that signal over a regular telephone line, or to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper.

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Basically, any computer with a modem and a printer fits that description, I would think. That law gives you the right to sue for $500 per spam in *any* state. Of course, the prohibitive cost and overall impracticality of it means that it never gets used. Best thing to do is file a complaint with the FCC and if they get enough, they will fine the spammer.

Thanks for all of the info guys. At least I'm not alone in this damn war.

Terr as it stands the WA law is for small claim court you can inform the company and ask for $50.00 per unwanted email. I do find it rather interisting that our very own M$ hotmail my own account in one week hit a all time high of 300 emails all junk and ads humm since I am unemployed at the moment that amounts to about 15k if I can trace them all down hey gotta make a living :) New full time job me thinks :)