Forum Moderators: phranque
In the past, I just deleted the offending spam from the message board and did nothing else thinking it was pointless to complain to anyone.
About five months ago, I created an entry page to the message board and added a small list of rules for visitors to abide by before entering the message board thinking that in the least it will act as a deterrent to spammers. The last and most emphasized rule is “COMMERCIAL USE OF THIS MESSAGE BOARD IS STRICLY FORBIDDEN..THERE IS A $500 FEE FOR REMOVAL OF COMMERCIAL MESSAGES.” Right after that warning there is a short sentence telling the visitor that by clicking the “Enter message board” they are agreeing to abide by the rules they have just read.
For the most part the message has worked until a week ago.
It was only one spam message and it was not even advertising anything offensive. But then again, this person violated the rules.
After some investigation, I discovered that the site that spammed the message board has spammed many other message boards and guest books. Matter in fact; this person has spammed guest books on African university web sites.
My question is, can I send the owner of the offending site a bill for $500 and if they refuse to pay, haul this person into small claims court.
Would the warning I have on the entry page have any legal standing in any court?
The_Bob
We had 3 or 4 spammers target our site's comment system once, posting hundreds obscene messages an hour for half a day. Turned out it was some students in a school in Australia. Took ages to clean up the database with a couple of hours downtime.
A quick email to the school's network admin and they were suspended for a couple of weeks. Result!
You need the advice of an attorney on that kind of matter though, as already suggested.
TJ
I've noticed more and more hosting companies are adding penalty provisions in their TOS' for abusive customers like spammers. I have no idea if these have been tested in court yet as being enforcable. Like others have said, seek out an attorney for advice.
Personally, I wouldn't even bother with court unless he was local and I could use small claims. If that's not the case with you two, just contact his ISP/host and request they terminate his account instead. He's probably a type use to changing at least once a month anyway.
or you could just delete their post, delete their account, and ban their IP ...
You have to be realistic. It's truly too common a thing to be taken seriously or even think it can be avoided without taking personal measures. Message boards have to be carefully monitored or any of them can be trashed. You either have to tend to it regularly, set it up to be pre-approved before anything can be posted, or if it's too burdensome count the cost of whether it's bringing enough value to be worth having.
A lot of what we think may be individuals are in actuality automated, and would anyone want to be banning entire ISPs from their site altogether indiscriminately - like AOL?
If a message board is left open for anyone who comes along to post it's just about asking for trouble. Two step registration with confirmation required is very common nowadays and could probably slow it down enough where it wouldn't be rampant; and it sure would make it easier to identify whoever would be deliberately causing problems.
