(A) The name, physical address, electronic mail address, and telephone number of person who initiates transmission of message.

(B) The name, physical address, electronic mail address, and telephone number of person who created content of message, if different from information under subparagraph (A).

(C) A statement that further transmissions of unsolicited commercial electronic mail to recipient by person who initiates transmission of message may be stopped at no cost to recipient by sending a reply to originating electronic mail address with word `remove' in subject line. ------------------------

How many messages citing this "Law" as justification for sending you SPAM contain items in Para. (2)(A) & (B). I haven't seen any out of 1000's I received. In fact, in those that I try to send a message back to, reply address is usually invalid.

Plus, even though they furnish you with a means at end of message to "Remove" yourself from mailings, it is usually a false address or url when you actually try to remove yourself.

This type of mis-information spreads like wildfire once someone makes it up and pretty soon everybody takes it for truth. It is similar to all those emails, forwarded by thousands, proclaiming that Microsoft is going to pay you over $200 for each person you forward message to.

The use of this statement of "Law" in sending unsolicited email advertisements does not diminish fact that they are still SPAM no matter how a mailer tries to camouflage his or her efforts. It should also make you think twice, no matter how great offer looks, about integrity of individual and/or company sending it to you and whether you want to deal with them..

Joe Reinbold, Publisher of Home Income Quarterly E-dition, a free weekly online marketing newsletter. To subscribe just mailto:subscribe@homebizlink.com with "Subscribe" in the subject. Or visit The Entrepreneur's Home Business Link where you will find the solutions to your home business needs at: http://www.homebizlink.com

It took me a few minutes of hard thinking to figure out connection, but once I worked it out, I was shocked at power these amateur spam cops now have. An accusation appears to be as good as a conviction, at least in eyes of Virtual Avenue.

It appears this is what happened: for whatever reason, a disgruntled subscriber has been unable to unsubscribe from WhatUSeek newsletter. So instead of just complaining straight to publishers of this newsletter, or even to Host of newsletter web page, they decided to get VERY nasty and file spam reports against every link & email address that they can find within that newsletter (and it is normally quite a big newsletter !).

So this person sees my harmless article, checks out resource box and sends off a spam report to Host of my advertised web page. Even though I have never sent an email to this person in my life ! In response to a single unsubstantiated report, Virtual Avenue IMMEDIATELY shuts down all my web sites without any warning.

Numerous further emails were exchanged over next few days, with "support" people (now there's an inappropriate title) refusing to reinstate my web sites, even though they eventually acknowledged I was not a publisher of newsletter and had not spammed anyone. They had received robot complaints from Spam Cop and were determined that someone was going to suffer for it. I was simply guilty by association.

Meanwhile, I have been spending at least 30 minutes daily responding to all emails complaining about site being down, not to mention many hours involved with shifting websites elsewhere. I have lost bucket-loads of customers due to a false accusation and a trigger-happy Host who seems anxious to shut-down its own members.

So next time you get annoyed by unsolicted commercial email in your Inbox, just remember - it could be worse. At least these pests aren't actively trying to close down your business.