A person who intentionally sends (or causes to be sent) an unsolicited commercial e-mail message through an e-mail service provider that the sender knew or "should have known" was located in Michigan, or to an e-mail address that the sender knew or "should have known" was held by a Michigan resident, must do the following:
- Include in the e-mail subject line "ADV:" as the first four characters;
- Provide the sender's legal name, correct street address, valid Internet domain name, and valid return e-mail address;
- Establish a toll-free telephone number, a valid return e-mail address, or another "easy-to-use" electronic method by which a recipient can notify the sender to stop sending e-mail and prominently disclose this information in e-mail messages;
- Establish and maintain the necessary policies and records to ensure that consumers' requests not to receive additional e-mail will be honored.
|
|
Commercial e-mail is e-mail that promotes goods, services, real property, and other things of value.
Under Michigan law, an e-mail is considered "unsolicited" if it was sent without the recipient's express permission by a business with which the consumer had no preexisting business or personal relationship.
A "preexisting business relationship" is defined as a relationship existing before the receipt of an e-mail and formed voluntarily by the recipient with another person (through an inquiry, application, purchase, or use of a product or service furnished by the sender).
Finally, an e-mail is not unsolicited if it was received as a result of the recipient opting into a system in order to receive promotional material.
Under Michigan law, an e-mail is considered "unsolicited" if it was sent without the recipient's express permission by a business with which the consumer had no preexisting business or personal relationship.
A "preexisting business relationship" is defined as a relationship existing before the receipt of an e-mail and formed voluntarily by the recipient with another person (through an inquiry, application, purchase, or use of a product or service furnished by the sender).
Finally, an e-mail is not unsolicited if it was received as a result of the recipient opting into a system in order to receive promotional material.
|
|
The Bait:
Con artists claim to be officials, businesspeople, or the surviving spouses of former government honchos in Nigeria or another country whose money is somehow tied up for a limited time. They offer to transfer lots of money into your bank account if you will pay a fee or "taxes" to help them access their money. If you respond to the initial offer, you may receive documents that look "official." Then they ask you to send money to cover transaction and transfer costs and attorney's fees, as well as blank letterhead, your bank account numbers, or other information. They may even encourage you to travel to the country in question, or a neighboring country, to complete the transaction. Some fraudsters have even produced trunks of dyed or stamped money to try to verify their claims.
The Catch:
The emails are from crooks trying to steal your money or your identity. Inevitably, in this scenario, emergencies come up, requiring more of your money and delaying the "transfer" of funds to your account. In the end, there aren't any profits for you, and the scam artist vanishes with your money. The harm sometimes can be felt even beyond your pocketbook: according to State Department reports, people who have responded to "pay in advance " solicitations have been beaten, subjected to threats and extortion, and in some cases, murdered.
Your Safety Net:
If you receive an email from someone claiming to need your help getting money out of a foreign country, don't respond.
Con artists claim to be officials, businesspeople, or the surviving spouses of former government honchos in Nigeria or another country whose money is somehow tied up for a limited time. They offer to transfer lots of money into your bank account if you will pay a fee or "taxes" to help them access their money. If you respond to the initial offer, you may receive documents that look "official." Then they ask you to send money to cover transaction and transfer costs and attorney's fees, as well as blank letterhead, your bank account numbers, or other information. They may even encourage you to travel to the country in question, or a neighboring country, to complete the transaction. Some fraudsters have even produced trunks of dyed or stamped money to try to verify their claims.
The Catch:
The emails are from crooks trying to steal your money or your identity. Inevitably, in this scenario, emergencies come up, requiring more of your money and delaying the "transfer" of funds to your account. In the end, there aren't any profits for you, and the scam artist vanishes with your money. The harm sometimes can be felt even beyond your pocketbook: according to State Department reports, people who have responded to "pay in advance " solicitations have been beaten, subjected to threats and extortion, and in some cases, murdered.
Your Safety Net:
If you receive an email from someone claiming to need your help getting money out of a foreign country, don't respond.
|
|
Advance fee fraud gets its name from the fact that an investor is asked to pay a fee up front or in advance of receiving any proceeds, money, stock or warrants in order for the deal to go through. The fee may be in the form of a commission, regulatory fee or tax, or some other incidental expense. These secondary advance fee schemes work very similarly to boiler room operations, the difference being that an advance fee scheme generally targets investors who already purchased under performing securities, perhaps through an affiliated boiler room, offering to arrange a lucrative sale of those securities, but first requiring the payment of an advance fee.
One type of advance fee fraud is known as a Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud. In these schemes, someone pretending to be a Nigerian official or business-person asks ordinary individuals and companies to help move millions of dollars out of Nigeria in exchange for high, hassle free profits. The fraudsters solicit investors through mass mailings, faxes, phone calls, and emails.
The U.S. Secret Service has set up a task force for addressing only Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud schemes.If you have suffered a financial loss from a Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud scheme, please contact your local U.S. Secret Service Field Office.
One type of advance fee fraud is known as a Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud. In these schemes, someone pretending to be a Nigerian official or business-person asks ordinary individuals and companies to help move millions of dollars out of Nigeria in exchange for high, hassle free profits. The fraudsters solicit investors through mass mailings, faxes, phone calls, and emails.
The U.S. Secret Service has set up a task force for addressing only Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud schemes.If you have suffered a financial loss from a Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud scheme, please contact your local U.S. Secret Service Field Office.
|
|
A code of practice has been published to guide people on how sender information and unsubscribe-facility statements should be presented, and the type of unsubscribe facility that should be provided, in commercial electronic messages, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority says. The code will be gazetted on November 30.
The code will take effect when both the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance Phase 2, which concerns the rules for sending commercial electronic messages, and the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Regulation come into operation on December 22.
Phase one of the ordinance, which covers offences concerning the use of unscrupulous techniques to reach out to more recipients, and fraudulent and other illicit activities related to the sending of multiple commercial electronic messages, came into effect in June.
The code of practice can be downloaded here. Commercial electronic message senders should read the code in conjunction with the ordinance and the regulation. Senders should review their existing practice and service platforms and ensure they will comply with the legal requirements.
Senders should also note the three do-not-call registers for fax, short messages on telephone and pre-recorded phone messages will launch in phases in December. When the registers come into operation, senders should not send commercial electronic messages to the numbers which have been listed on the registers unless they have obtained consent from the recipients.
Senders who wish to subscribe to the registers for vetting their sending lists against the registers will have to pay a $1,600 annual fee or a $425 quarterly fee for each register.
The code will take effect when both the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance Phase 2, which concerns the rules for sending commercial electronic messages, and the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Regulation come into operation on December 22.
Phase one of the ordinance, which covers offences concerning the use of unscrupulous techniques to reach out to more recipients, and fraudulent and other illicit activities related to the sending of multiple commercial electronic messages, came into effect in June.
The code of practice can be downloaded here. Commercial electronic message senders should read the code in conjunction with the ordinance and the regulation. Senders should review their existing practice and service platforms and ensure they will comply with the legal requirements.
Senders should also note the three do-not-call registers for fax, short messages on telephone and pre-recorded phone messages will launch in phases in December. When the registers come into operation, senders should not send commercial electronic messages to the numbers which have been listed on the registers unless they have obtained consent from the recipients.
Senders who wish to subscribe to the registers for vetting their sending lists against the registers will have to pay a $1,600 annual fee or a $425 quarterly fee for each register.
|
|
1. Removal from public accessibility. A number of e-mail addresses were posted on publicly accessible Web sites for two weeks, then removed. The goal was to determine whether removing the address from public view would have an effect on the overall amount of spam received.
2. Posting in "human-readable" form. Some Internet users posting their addresses in public places have altered the form of their e-mail address in such a way that another user can still easily reach them, but an automated tool would not recognize them. For example, a user with e-mail address example@domain.com could post his address as "example at domain dot com." We tested the effectiveness of this practice by posting addresses on the Web and on USENET newsgroups in this "human-readable" form.
3. Posting in HTML-obscured form. Tech-savvy Internet users have sometimes used special codes in HTML -- Hypertext Markup Language, used to construct Web pages -- to post their addresses in a way that Web browsers can interpret, but that is an obstacle to automated spam tools. In HTML, the letter "e" can be written "e" and the "@" symbol "@." So, the address "example@domain.com" could be written "exampl e@domain.com."[3] We tested the effectiveness of this practice by posting addresses on the Web and on USENET in this HTML-obscured form.
4. Changing personal preferences on a Web site. Many Web sites provide users with the opportunity to alter their personal preference so that they no longer receive e-mail communication from that site. Some Internet users, however, have been concerned that changing those preferences will have little effect on the amount of spam received, believing that once an address is "out," there is little they can do about it. We tested the effectiveness of changing one's personal preferences by returning to Web sites to which we'd submitted e-mail addresses and changing the addresses' associated preferences to request no further e-mail communication. We tried this in two separate ways. For certain addresses, we would "opt-in" to certain kinds of communication, then log back in and immediately change our preferences to "opt-out." For another set of addresses, we allowed at least two weeks to elapse before changing preferences. In both cases, we allowed a two-week "grace period" for our changes to take effect before classifying received e-mails as spam.
Source: cdt.org
2. Posting in "human-readable" form. Some Internet users posting their addresses in public places have altered the form of their e-mail address in such a way that another user can still easily reach them, but an automated tool would not recognize them. For example, a user with e-mail address example@domain.com could post his address as "example at domain dot com." We tested the effectiveness of this practice by posting addresses on the Web and on USENET newsgroups in this "human-readable" form.
3. Posting in HTML-obscured form. Tech-savvy Internet users have sometimes used special codes in HTML -- Hypertext Markup Language, used to construct Web pages -- to post their addresses in a way that Web browsers can interpret, but that is an obstacle to automated spam tools. In HTML, the letter "e" can be written "e" and the "@" symbol "@." So, the address "example@domain.com" could be written "exampl e@domain.com."[3] We tested the effectiveness of this practice by posting addresses on the Web and on USENET in this HTML-obscured form.
4. Changing personal preferences on a Web site. Many Web sites provide users with the opportunity to alter their personal preference so that they no longer receive e-mail communication from that site. Some Internet users, however, have been concerned that changing those preferences will have little effect on the amount of spam received, believing that once an address is "out," there is little they can do about it. We tested the effectiveness of changing one's personal preferences by returning to Web sites to which we'd submitted e-mail addresses and changing the addresses' associated preferences to request no further e-mail communication. We tried this in two separate ways. For certain addresses, we would "opt-in" to certain kinds of communication, then log back in and immediately change our preferences to "opt-out." For another set of addresses, we allowed at least two weeks to elapse before changing preferences. In both cases, we allowed a two-week "grace period" for our changes to take effect before classifying received e-mails as spam.
Source: cdt.org
|
|
Nigerian Scam
You receive an official looking letter from someone claiming to be a Nigerian who, because of Nigerian government rules, needs help transferring money out of that country. Perhaps you are asked to deposit the funds into your bank account for a "reward" of 20 to 30 percent of the funds, which usually are in the millions of dollars. To do your part, you are simply asked to supply your bank account number and some money supposedly to cover "expenses". But the crooks behind these scams simply keep your money and use the account information to steal more money. Another variation involves a request that you act as a front in a real estate purchase so the true identity of the Nigerian can be kept secret. You are offered a hefty fee for your services but you’ll have to provide "good faith" money and help pay certain expenses. Then the only funds exchanged go from the unsuspecting victim to the con artist.
Warning signs:
Nobody is going to give you a percentage of millions of dollars simply for the privilege of using your bank account or your name to transfer money to the U S. Some people have lost their lives trying to collect their money lost in this scheme.
Best defense:
If you receive a letter or fax containing promises of instant wealth, do not respond. Promptly take it to your nearest U.S. Postal Inspection Office.