Legal Question in Technology Law in North Carolina
What can be done about sexually harrasing email
Every day I receive several emails from porno sites. We have constantly been asking AOL to stop allowing this unsolicited porno email to be sent to us, but they have been very unco-operative.
We allow our 8 year old daughter to go online, and since many of these porno emails have very deceptive subject lines, and descriptions, we worry that she might be exposed to material that is completely unsuitable for a child.
Is there anything that can be done about this type of online sexual harassment? And yes, I do feel harassed by it. I haven't asked for this garbage, I don't want it, and yet it keeps coming. What can be done?
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: sexually harrasing email
Your options are somewhat limited.
From a legal standpoint, only a few states have laws regulating commercial advertisements sent by email. I believe that California, Washington, Nevada and Virginia have such laws. If you were sure that one of the companies sending you offensive email is located in one of those states, you could sue. I doubt that North Carolina has any laws regarding email, but I could be wrong. You might consider getting involved with the movement to regulate or ban commercial email. Take a look at http://www.cauce.org for more info.
From a technical standpoint, have you tried to filter your email? California's law requires that spammers start the subject header with ADV: for regular spam and ADV:ADT: for porno ads. You can filter a lot of the others by using keywords you hope your daughter never hears for moving the message from the inbox to the trash. If your email program won't filter, there are plenty of other email clients that will. The latest version of Netscape is still free and you can use it to read your filtered mail.
Re: What can be done about sex...
Invest in blocking software for your PC -- I recall one product called "Net Nanny" but there are several others that will block porn sites.
Unless you find a lawyer looking for a crusade, you have no viable legal remedy against porn spammers.
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