The first session I moderated yesterday morning revolved around SPAM and new trends in dealing with this problem. One of the questions I posed to the panelists was whether new ways of dealing with SPAM are simply RBL’s that you pay for. I think, however, that that is not the case. Dealing with SPAM and the way it affects your network is one of the key ways of dealing with, and minimizing risk, for your company. Advanced methods of addressing SPAM are a great way of doing this.
From a legal perspective, SPAM poses two risks to your company. The primary risk is that a SPAM outbreak cripples your network. Network outages lead to large contract claims, and may affect your ability to get reasonably priced insurance – the linchpin of any risk mitigation strategy. The second is more of a nuisance issue: e-mail outages are the largest source of letters demanding “$100,000 for missed business opportunities” because of a missed e-mail. Assuming you have a decent TOS, these claims are typically easy to deal with. However they take an inordinate amount of legal time to handle, and, depending on your settlement profile, may actually involve some outlay of cash to address.
