ISP receives $2.6M as compensation for spam flood

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» 08 May 2010

ISP receives $2.6M as compensation for spam flood

The small-time internet service provider experienced a flood of spam messages from a certain company for almost 18 months. To fight this abuse, the ISP filed a case against the corporation responsible for the 25,000 spam mails sent to them. The plaintiff won the case and the company involved was ordered to pay a sum amount of money that reaches 2.6 million US dollars so as to compensate for the damages brought about by the spamming activity.

Equivalent amount of money for every unwanted mail

But then, there is still no assurance if Asis Internet Service will receive just that amount of money ordered by the court. This is because of the verdict that is a basis for the power of the law “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act” or CAN-SPAM that was passed by the Congress in the year of 2003. This gives way for ordering of penalty of greater than 100 US dollars per spam messages. The amount of money that will be charged may increase up to three times the original fine due to some other grounds.

Money for the unnecessary expenses

It was Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D, Laporte of the US District Court in Northern California who passed the penalty for this spamming case. This was a case that came together with the one charged against the administrators of the company, Find a Quote. According to Asis, the ISP based at Garberville, California with only about four employees, they collected around 200,000 spam mails a day during the past months. And, they had to waste 3,000 US dollars per month just to deal with these unwanted messages.

According to the statement made by Laporte, the amount of money that was supposed to be granted for the ISP was 865,340 US dollars. However, this sum of cash was tripled to 2.596 million US dollars because the “Find a Quote” spammers including Edward Heckerson utilized automatic scripting in order to make sending of spam mails possible.

Enormous sum but not quite

This may appear to be quite a large amount of money. However, this is not a least bit considered as a one-of-a-kind record compared to other similar cases. During the past year, Facebook received 711 US dollars from the Spamford Wallace and Arizona ISP won the case and obtained 236 million US dollars from the mom-and-pop spam shop in 2008.

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