Legal Updates

Compensation under the anti-spam law will not be afforded if the mailing list removal request was intentionally sent not pursuant to instructions

February 6, 2020
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A person demanded compensation for 79 advertising emails received after he insisted on removing himself from the mailing list, not using the manners offered in the removal notice, because he was allegedly afraid of viruses.
The Court rejected the claim and held that the plaintiff acted in bad faith and with malicious intent to extort funds. Under law, anyone who agreed to receive advertisements may at any time notify the advertiser of refusal to accept advertisements and withdraw from the consent with the refusal notice to be sent, inter alia, "in the way the recipient was sent the advertisement". When the message is sent by an email, this does not necessarily means that the refusal message should be by 'reply' to the address from which the advertisement was sent, but the possibility of sending the refusal message by an email and not by mail, telephone or other manners. Here, the company offered its customers two ways to remove themselves from the mailing list: Click the "Remove" button or click the "Help" button that leads to a mailing address for customer service of the company which handles the removal requests. The plaintiff ignored this and deliberately sent 17 refusals in a reply email even though they were not useful. This is a serial plaintiff who acted with malicious intent to extort funds, because when he sought to send his warning letter, he sent it to the same email address he deliberately avoided.