A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.


Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16

There was a case in this country a couple of weeks ago where a man won compensation from a spammer.

Nice one Al ,,,only thing is he couldn't find Osama Bin Laden ,, and he was so pissed he had to take it out on someone .

Does this mean that hiding behind a nickname is no longer relevant?

If I want to rant at someone, what personal details do I need to include to make me immune to prosecution?

A few years ago I sent two or three anonymous emails to an old student friend, as a lead-up to sending them a book as a present. The emails were intended to entertain and amuse, and contained cryptic clues together with enough mutually-known information to have pointed to me as the source. Or so I thought. After getting a similarly cryptic reply I assumed they'd got the joke and went on to post the book. But then... nothing. The next time I spoke to them on the phone I asked if the book had arrived OK, only to discover that they hadn't twigged what was going on. It turned out that they'd viewed the emails as potentially sinister, and referred the parcel containing the book to the local police. As they never subsequently referred to the book's title or contents I can only assume that it was destroyed as a suspect package.

My old friend didn't find it funny. Neither, but for different reasons, did I. Having known them for so long I found it hard to accept that they could have been so dense, but as far as I know they weren't having me on.

There's a moral there somewhere.

You aint seen me ,,right .

Kayak :-)

I am currently preparing a list of annoying people that I will be fowarding to the FBI in the hope that if these people set foot on US soil they will be arrested immediately and banged up for life.

Anyone know where I can get a list of all 50 odd million English tw*ts ?

Does this include spamming threads or bbs also. If so we should send Blingers details...

e-mail me explosive one, I long to hear from you

lol!!!!!!!!!!

And your email is????

I understand that if enough people complain to a ISP about "spam" then they will shut the website & e-mail address down.

But how do you find out the e-mail address of a ISP to send complaints to?

Check out:

http://iptools.seekover.com/

Here's a nice Connection Speed Tester and also some other really good information tools

DocProc

I managed to locate a couple of "abuse" email addresses. Sent e-mails, but its going to take a lot of time to notify them but if it works it will be worth it.

Watch out Dil.

cheers GF.

The problem little woman is that the email address that seems to be sending to you is normally forged. All someone has to do is to enter a fake address into their mail program. From looking at the headers of the email (Properties) you can tell which ISP the spam is coming from and sometimes the IP number, but this will be no use to you without the cooperation of the sending ISP, and in any case most spam is sent by abusively using third party mail gateways or PCs who have no idea they are being used in this way.

The long and short of it is that unfortunately you will be wasting your time doing that. If it were so easy spam would not be the problem that it is :-)

Kayak, ... but those who hacks/attempts-to-hack into UK/US intelligence/military etc
sites do get caught very quickly, even across continents. So there must already exist tools and facilities we should all be allowed to use.

Using the internet does leave a pretty comprehensive trail which is why investigative agencies can often nail people. But it requires the cooperation of the ISPs to examine their access and traffic logs, often looking for one piece of information out of millions. You're unlikely to get that as a private individual.

I may start posting again! :)

Script, yes please :-)

Kayak, thanks. Pity. Small guys need more protection and quickly than the big guys.

finding out ip adresses is easy little woman everytime you switch ur comp on if your broadband your logged in on your ip address so basically your named as soon as u switch ur comp on

if like some of the computer companies are saying that they want to use bio medic passwords i.e eyes or finger print then they will not only have your ip address but a massive fingerprint and retna data base throught the back door

that way if u say it was not u u had better hope someone else has ur eyes fingerprint or u are as a famous yank said

fecked

bottom line george orwell was a few years out

as for spam its illegal as it is

there is a european directive that u can sue ppl for sending it to u

just contact ur ip server and ask them for the address

mind u they are suppose to stop it in the first place so life

lol

enjoy

aint life great

roflmao

I sent the e-mail I received (using forward) to the abuse address. This way they can look into it, with all the information I receive. I presume they can tell if its a "hijacked" address etc or not. I have had replys, thanking me for the info etc.

Only time will tell - if the number of them reduce or not.

I will mention in passing that last year I started receiving mail shots from a very well known company. Despite trying to register to get them stopped they continued comming - as instructed on the e-mail , I would return the e-mail with "unsubscribe" . (Several each day). After about a month of going through the process with each e-mail I eventually had enough. Using cut & paste, I returned each e-mail using "unsubcscribe" but in the to: box I put the e-mail address as many times as it would let me. I did the same in the cc box. Then I sent the e-mail. The following day I stopped getting the mail shot e-mails :-)!