起诉发垃圾邮件公司 男子收入超百万美元 

    Daniel Balsam hates spam*. Most everybody does, of course. But he has acted on his hate as few have, going far beyond simply hitting the delete button. He sues them.

    Eight years ago, Balsam was working as a marketer when he received one too many e-mail pitches to enlarge his breasts.

    Enraged, he launched a Web site called Danhatesspam.com, quit a career in marketing to go to law school and is making a decent* living suing companies who flood his e-mail inboxes with offers of cheap drugs and unbelievable* vacations.

    “I feel like I’m doing a little bit of good cleaning up the Internet,” Balsam said.

    From San Francisco Superior Court small claims court to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Balsam, based in San Francisco, has filed many lawsuits, including dozens before he graduated from law school in 2008, against e-mail marketers he says violate anti-spamming laws.

    His many victories are mere rain drops in the ocean considering that Cisco Systems Inc. estimates* that there are 200 billion spam messages circulating a day, accounting for 90 percent of all e-mails.

    Still, Balsam settles enough lawsuits and collects enough from judgments to make a living. He has earned over US$1 million in court judgments and lawsuit settlements with companies accused of sending illegal* spam.

    Balsam mostly sues companies he accuses of violating California’s anti-spam law.

    Among other restrictions*, the law prohibits* companies from sending spam with headers that misleads the recipient into believing the e-mail is noncommercial or comes with offers of “free” products that aren’t true.

    The law also requires a way for Internet consumers to “opt out” of receiving any more spam from a sender.

     (SD-Agencies)