ASSEMBLY PASSES VAN DREW/ALBANO MEASURE TO PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM 'CYBER-SCAM'

ASSEMBLY PASSES VAN DREW/ALBANO MEASURE TO PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM 'CYBER-SCAM'

(TRENTON) - The Assembly today passed legislation Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew and Nelson Albano sponsored to protect New Jersey residents from being inundated by an avalanche of unwanted commercial "spam" e-mails and to punish cyber-pirates who hijack Internet domains to engage in scamming practices.

"Too many residents open their e-mail inboxes each day to find a barrage of annoying spam messages," said Van Drew (D-Cape May/Atlantic/Cumberland). "Spam wastes time and hampers productivity. By jamming e-mail inboxes, spam prevents people and business from receiving important and essential e-mails."

"Spam messages are a nuisance and a drain on computer performance," said Albano (D-Cumberland\Cape May\Atlantic). "Consumers deserve protection from countless spam messages that serve no purpose other than to clog e-mail inboxes and assault our privacy."

Thirty-eight states, including California, have anti-spam laws which ban all unsolicited commercial e-mail and give consumers the right to sue bulk mailers who ignore the restrictions.

The Van Drew\Albano measure would give New Jersey one of the toughest anti-spam laws in the nation.

Based on get-tough federal legislation, the Van Drew/Albano measure (A-2559) would establish criminal and civil penalties for:

• Illegally accessing a protected computer and knowingly transmitting multiple commercial e-mail messages;
• Intentionally falsifying an e-mail's header information in an effort to impair the ability to identify, locate or respond to the sender of such e-mail; 
• Falsely registering multiple e-mail accounts or on-line user accounts or two or more domain names with the intent to deceive the receiver that e-mail is from different sources; 
• Intentionally falsifying the right to use Internet protocol addresses to send commercial e-mail messages; 
• Intentionally using e-mail addresses generated automatically from an Internet website or from another person's proprietary online service to send 'spam'; 
• Providing or selecting unauthorized e-mail addresses that are randomly generated by a user or service; or 
• Transmitting multiple commercial e-mail messages from 20 or more e-mail accounts or 10 or more domain names.

The legislation also would make it a crime to violate the following limits on the number of e-mails that can be sent out in a given time period: 

• 250 commercial e-mail messages in any 24-hour period; 
• 2,500 commercial e-mail messages during any 30-day period. · 25,000 commercial e-mail messages during any one year period;

The Assembly passed the measure 73 to 0 with two abstentions. The bill now heads to the Senate for further consideration.

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