Email SPAM – Group 1
What is it? What is the main purpose of sending it?
What is it?
Email spam, which is also called junk email or unsolicited bulk email (UBE), is a form of electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspect that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. Email SPAM is a message that is sent to a large group of individual with a purpose to force the message onto people who have no other choice to receive it.
Purpose sending it:
The purpose of this Email SPAM is for advertizing. Most companies use this method to spread their products and offers by putting the Email with a URL to their website. Email SPAM is also used for frauds and scam. Some people use this Email SPAM to trick people into giving money by making people entering their personal on a fake Web site using email forged to look like email from bank and formal organization so that people will enter their personal information. There are also a type of scam where people make advance payment for a product but never gets it.
1. How the sender gets the email address?
There are a few method that the sender can use to get email address which is they collect the email addresses from chatrooms, website, customer lists, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users address book. Some might even but it from other sender. Sender also use a method known as “email appending” or “epending” where known information about their target (such as postal address) is used to search for targets email address.
2. CAN SPAM Act of 2003
CAN SPAM Act of 2003 stand for “Controlling the Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003”. This bill content does not legitimize email spam but it pre-empt laws that allow easier prosecution and rights to private action. The content of this bill permits senders to send email as long as it follows the 3 basic rules of defined in the CAN SPAM Act of 2003 which is unsubscribe compliance, content compliance and behaviour compliance. There is also no restriction against a company to send email to existing customer or anyone that has inquired about their companies’ product. With this bill, senders do not require permission to send marketing messages or advertisements. It also prevents the receiver from suing the sender. Receivers of email can choose not to receive more email form the companies and the companies will be given 10 day to cease sending more emails. This also prevents the companies from selling or transferring the email address of the receiver that choose this option. CAN SPAM Act prohibit sending sexually-oriented spam without the label later determined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT." It also disallow email with falsified header information and email that contain hacking possibilities such as harvesting, dictionary attacks, IP address spoofing, hijacking computers trough Trojan horses or worms.
The following are the contents of CAN SPAM Act of 2003:
Unsubscribe compliance
§ A visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism is present in all emails.
§ Consumer opt-out requests are honoured within 10 days.
§ Opt-out lists also known as Suppression lists are only used for compliance purposes.
Content compliance
§ Accurate from lines (including "friendly forms")
§ Relevant subject lines (relative to offer in body content and not deceptive)
§ A legitimate physical address of the publisher and/or advertiser is present.
§ A label is present if the content is adult.
Sending behaviour compliance
§ A message cannot be sent through an open relay
§ A message cannot contain a false header
Content is exempt if it consists of:
§ Religious messages
§ Political messages
§ Content that broadly complies with the marketing mechanisms specified in the law
§ National security messages.
3. Discuss the act of SPAMing from the perspectives of Kantianism
Scenario
Company A give advertisements to user who browse through websites. So what the company does is create a webpage which will pop out or will be triggered when user clicks the link of the created website by Company A. In the webpage, user will be asked to key in their phone number. This is based on the advertisement created where the first 500 people who submit their phone number will receive a grand prize which is one unit of Iphone and one unit of Ipad.
When user keys in their phone number, the following will occur:
In an unethical way, the company will use the user’s phone number to gain personal information of the user such as name, housing address and even their email. This could lead to loads of problems. Bear in mind that spamming is a kind of method that can be used to advertise while doing unethical activity to gain personal benefit.
Based on the 2nd formulation of the Kantianism theory, the activity done by Company A is considered to be unethical. This is because the company uses other people for their own benefit. We can see that the company attracts user’s attention by giving out valuable rewards or prizes to people who are considered the first 500 people to submit their phone number. We can say that company is using other people for their benefit which relates with the 2nd formulation of the Kantianism theory.
Additional Note:
Additional Note:
We have left our comment at cisb412jan2012s1g9.blogspot.com/
1 comments:
Due to the volume of spam email on the Internet, spam filters are essential to most users. Some marketers report that legitimate commercial email messages frequently get caught and hidden by filters, however, it is somewhat less common for email users to complain that spam filters block legitimate mail.
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