How to ward off unwanted mail, e-mail and phone calls

What technology has done for legitimate enterprises it’s also done for illegitimate ones.

Offers to share in Nigerian fortunes, to name one notorious fraud, used to arrive in mailboxes. Then fax technology helped swindlers cut the cost of reaching their marks. The Internet made it possible to e-mail spam into untold numbers of personal computers for free.

Now there are news reports of dubious pitches for Haiti donations arriving on Blackberrys. As usual, the fraudsters are using technology to stay a step ahead of the law.

In Maryland, the state Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Trade Commission handle consumer complaints about fraudulent spam. Consumers are pressing for more.

“They’ve done a good job,” says Marceline White, executive director of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition in Baltimore. “A lot of consumers have been helped, but they’ve already been harmed. We want prevention.”

Federal anti-spam law

The federal CAN-Spam Act of 2003 sets boundaries for commercial e-mail, gives people the right to block it and prescribes penalties for violations. Businesses must identify themselves as the source of e-mail and disclose their location. They must give recipients a way to opt out of future e-mail and act on those requests promptly. The FTC can impose fines of up to $16,000 for each e-mail in violation.

Criminal violations are turned over to federal prosecutors, but rarely. Three years ago, a California man was convicted of sending thousands of e-mails that prompted America Online users to send credit card numbers and other personal information. Jeffrey Brett Goodin is serving a six-year prison sentence for that — the first such conviction and possibly still the only one.

The U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland has never received a CAN-Spam Act case.

Do-not-call list renewals

Federal law also controls phone spam, or telemarketing, by sponsoring a do-not-call list that prohibits most unsolicited calls for five years. Consumers can renew their registration for another five years by calling the FTC again at 888-382-1222. A complaint about a caller can be filed on the Do Not Call Web site within 31 days of registering.

The state Attorney General’s Office works to resolve fraud complaints against Maryland companies, but that’s where its jurisdiction ends.

“Maryland actually has pretty good law,” White says. “What’s needed for prevention is widespread public education to compete with the ads.”

Within hours of Haiti’s disastrous earthquake Jan. 12, new Web addresses were being registered to request donations. Two days later, the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center in Bethesda was reporting the addition of 400 Internet addresses mentioning earthquake, survivors, help and such. In the aftermath of past disasters, the FBI says, spammers never delivered donations and, instead, collected credit card numbers for use later.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office followed the FBI warning with a link on its home page to White House advice on making contributions.

“We haven’t received any complaints, but we want to get out in front of it,” says spokeswoman Raquel Guillory. On the office Web site, consumers can find a host of alerts and tips on a variety of issues.

Unending battle

The Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition is pushing for creation of a federal consumer protection agency to provide clear legal guidance on loans and other financial transactions.

State regulators concede the difficulty of staying ahead of hustlers willing to break the spam law.
Twitter, the latest innovation in social networking, already has logged scores of spam complaints, yet the appearance of Twitter spam was news to both the AG’s office and the consumer coalition.

“I’m not surprised, though,” says White. “There are a lot of smart people putting their energy into that. If there’s a new technology, some people will try to exploit it by scamming other people.”

Carol Frey is a freelance writer based in Northern Virginia.