Archive for the ‘malicious communications act’ tag
Not Another One
We’ve written before about how some people love to hand it out but can’t take it from others.
Well we’re thrilled to have received today another missive from, quite possibly, the rudest person on the planet.
Two weeks ago, this person complained in no uncertain terms that their order hadn’t arrived and since we were clearly incompetent morons, the order should be cancelled immediately and a full refund given.
Except we’re not incompetent morons. The “customer” had never paid for the “order” and as we pointed out, we are not in the habit of sending out orders as gifts.
Well that really put the cat among the pigeons.
A real Harry Potter howler of an email whistled straight back, neatly swerving round our spam and anger filter and landing slap bang in the middle of our inbox.
We can’t divulge the contents – we suggest you use your imagination – suffice to say that particular individual has been well and truly crossed off our Christmas card list.
Back Tracking
OK we give in. People complained that our new policy of not allowing withheld numbers to call our order line was causing problems. So we’ve taken the block away and you can now call us from your office or wherever. We will review the decision if we start once again to get bombarded with junk calls from abroad.
All Systems Go
A lot of companies and individuals use clever software to determine whether incoming mail is real or spam. Some companies also use systems to determine whether the incoming mail which isn’t spam falls into the “whoa, here comes trouble” category.
Snorestore has a system like this. Basically it warns us that the way an email is worded, or whether it has been signed, or whether it contains certain phrases or words, could mean that the sender is not quite the genuine article. So we know pretty quickly whether to respond to the email or not, and how to respond if we do.
Invariably – and it’s our call whether we reply to these flagged emails – the response we then get back confirms the suspicions the system alerted us to in the first place.
This usually means that the sender resorts to abuse or threats. Under Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1998 it is an offence to send an indecent, offensive or threatening letter, electronic communication or other article to another person.
So what do we do then? We forward the emails to the sender’s ISP and let them deal with it.
