Harvesting E-mail Addresses?

Anyone know any legality specifics?

[Ins0mniak]

Recently a subsidiary of a large publishing house went through my site and stole every member's email address. They then sent everyone (except me [webmaster@ account]) spam, advertising their publishing services. Some people have even reported that this publishing house looked up their address from their name to send them snail mail. I contacted this company and notified them that what they did violates my terms of service.

[snip][/snip]

Then again today they emailed everyone [who had not published with them] saying they had not heard from them and wanted to offer their great service again. Not only is this rather annoying and invasive, but this company harvested these email addresses to offer a product that I have always had intent to offer in the future [to pay for my website]. Is it legal for me to do all the work, and them to reap the benifits?

HELP! >:-(

[edited by: Ins0mniak at 11:42 pm (utc) on May 23, 2003]

[Mardi_Gras]

Well, I guess a good first start would be to read and follow the Terms and Conditions of WebmasterWorld :)

That would mean deleting that url...

Then I would make sure the e-mail addresses on your site were protected to ensure your customers' privacy in the future.

[txbakers]

Really - why are you showing members email addresses?

There are lots of ways to hide them from harvesters, pick one and write it into your script and you'll never have the problem again.

[Mardi_Gras]

Ins0mniak - thanks for deleting the link. That rules catches a lot of newcomers by surprise, but as you hang out here you'll see there's good reason for it.

As to the harvesting, you have to keep in mind that your members' e-mail addresses are confidential information that they're entrusting you with. As txbakers said, get those addresses protected so this can't happen again.

Good luck, and welcome to WebmasterWorld :)