SEVERAL companies have begun selling lists of e-mail addresses that spammers
can use to send mass mailings. Although most of the firms鈥攕uch as Cyber
Promotions of Pennsylvania鈥攁re based in the US, at least one British
company has joined the trade.
A Solihull-based company, Scorpion, is sending unsolicited e-mails offering
50 000 British e-mail addresses, along with the software needed to send mass
mailings, for 拢299. It has not registered with the Office of Data
Protection (ODP). Companies that hold computer data about people have to
register with the ODP, and assistant registrar Philip Jones says it could be
prosecuted for not doing so. The maximum fine for failing to register is
拢5000. Scorpion says the addresses are already publicly available and are
gathered from Web pages, trade directories and newsgroups. There is nothing
illegal about bulk e-mailing, it says.
The ODP says it is not clear whether people who post e-mails to newsgroups
have any presumed right of privacy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 trivially easy to collect UK addresses
from news groups, and the spam that results is rising exponentially,鈥� says Steve
Harris, the British author of Spam Hater and other anti-bulk e-mail software.
鈥淐hecking your e-mail is getting to be a chore, not a pleasure.鈥�
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