Nevada Focus: Junk e-mail ban coming in July in Nevada

Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998 | 3:59 a.m.

Anti-junk-e-mail legislation introduced last year by Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, will take effect in July, allowing Nevadans to sue the senders of some forms of unsolicited electronic mail. Raggio said Nevada is the first state to pass laws against junk e-mail.

"As it finally was passed, which was a much less stringent law than introduced, it addresses civil liability for unsolicited commercial e-mail," Raggio said.

The initial bill made sending unsolicited e-mail a crime and prohibited unsolicited e-mail which advertises the purchase of property, goods or services.

"This or course caused a lot of concerns because a lot of business organizations send e-mail at no cost to themselves," Raggio said. "They took issue at any sort of limitation on it."

However, the final version made the issue a civil matter with a possibility of collecting $10 per message in damages. Further, the law exempts unsolicited mail that is marked as promotional and contains the name and street address of the sender and the procedures for being removed from the mailing list.

Raggio said he wanted to prevent the practice of "spamming," where a single user can send unsolicited e-mail to millions of online service users with a single keystroke. Junk e-mail senders frequently use fake return e-mail addresses and covertly route their mail through many different computers to cover their electronic tracks.

Hotmail is a company based in Sunnyvale, Calif., that provides free e-mail accounts to more than 10 million users, said Randy Delucchi, the company's customer service director. Junk e-mail senders frequently use the name of his service in their forged e-mails, but Delucchi said real Hotmail users can send messages to only 25 other users at a time - far shy of the massive mailing lists most "spammers" use.

Delucchi said the fraudulent use diminishes the value of his service. He likened it to a family leaving home for Bob's Burger Shop and instead meeting a man on a street corner with a fake Bob's hat and apron - selling spoiled meat.

"I think it is criminal and we are pursuing legal action," Delucchi said.

Delucchi said the fake e-mail addresses may mask a more sinister purpose. By sending unsolicited e-mail, the sender may be hoping people will respond, asking to be removed from the mailing list.

"In general, it is a pretty bad idea to complain about it," he said. "The only thing that serves to do is validate your e-mail address. All that does to him is prove that the e-mail address is valid."

A validated mailing list is more valuable than a random list of online users. The lists are sold via e-mail and web sites, offering millions of addresses for as low as $99.

Delucchi said a better way to deal with unsolicited e-mail is to forward a copy of the offending message to "Abuse"" or "Postmaster" at the location the mail was sent from. For example, if an offensive message came from hotmail.com, the complaint should be sent to abusehotmail.com or postmasterhotmail.com.

Jim Arendt, the webmaster of Ableweb in Carson City, said there are programs available online that will screen e-mail to delete junk mail.

"The problem is that it is really hard to choose certain addresses only," Arendt said.

Arendt said the most common way to screen out junk e-mail is for a user to block an entire domain name. However, this is the online equivalent of asking the local postmaster not to deliver any mail from, say, Denver or Chicago. The screening programs aren't able to distinguish between junk mail and mail from an old friend who just got an account with a provider that also serves spammers.

"Depending on how you filter that out, you may be blocking a valuable communication," Arendt said.