Bad news
I did a little digging, and apparently, this is what I found:

* "Phishing" scams by definition require the person to pretend to be a different website, and ask for some kind of information like login, password, credit card info, etc. and they didn't do this.

* "Spam" has to be something that you both don't want AND have no way to get off their list. If they have an unsubscribe link, they're allowed. Since they had that in the newsletter, it doesn't apply.

* I did a whois lookup on CAUSS.COM (used to be a tech nerd in my younger days!) and it is registered in Scotland, so it is unlikely we will get any real info on who the person is.

* Harassment, while illegal, is a very specific legal definition. Unfortunately, things that just annoy us don't qualify. There has to be a malicious intent, which malicious doesnt mean "to annoy people receiving it", it involves a real perceived threat to one's person, which this doesn't do.

Bottom line, its annoying, but the best thing we can do is to hit the unsubscribe link, not go to the site (Even out of curiosity), and ignore them. There is nothing that will drive people like this nuts than simply not responding. Whomever it is is very obviously reading this forum, and enjoying getting a rise out of us, the same as they do with their bandit signs.

I'm going to copy this same post into the other forum, and see if anyone else agrees.

ACK! Refrigerator Salesman are TERRIBLE!

>Bottom line, its annoying, but the best thing we can do is
>to hit the unsubscribe link, ...

WRONG - Don't ever hit the unsubscribe link on _unsolicited_ email (ie. Spam)!

Here is why:

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http://spam.abuse.net/overview/remove.shtml

Should I hit "remove"?

A lot of the spam that we get and that people write to us about comes with instructions on how to "remove yourself from our list". Yet, more often than not, the remove instructions don't work. Why is this?
Basically, you've just experienced what many call "rule #1": Spammers lie.

Remove lists don't work. Even the United States government has noticed this: "We are also working on (spam) cases that involve claims that you can opt out, when in fact what clicking on the link to unsubscribe will do is simply verify that you have a valid e-mail address, so that you can then get lots of spam instead of a little," said Howard Beales, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. In this story, Computerworld of New Zealand documents an experiment in which they demonstrate that remove lists really don't work.

Don't waste your time trying to jump through the spammers' hoops. Plenty of people have documented the fact that not only do remove lists not work, they do exactly what Mr. Beales says: they verify to the spammer that your e-mail address is good, and so then they put it on the premium CD and sell it to the next spammer for even more money.

In one case, an anti-spammer went to a remove-list web site and noticed that he'd been removed from the list, supposedly, even though he hadn't given them his address. So, he went into debugging mode, using telnet to access the raw HTML of the server directly, and discovered that it just gave you the same answer no matter what. In other words, the whole thing was a complete and utter fraud. Some spammers put more effort into their fakery, but in the end it comes down to the same thing: it does you no good to follow the removal instructions.

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Please follow the advice given by GreatWhite-BH in the News and Announcements forum, Post "Anti-CAUSS website":
http://www.causs.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=103&forum=DCForumID58

Best regards,
NoSpam

Notwithstanding any "legal definitons" of spam, most ISPs (the responsible ones, anyway) have very strict TOS and AUPs.

They don't care about legal definitions; they care about their reputation. If they get enough legitimate spam complaints against a customer, they'll kick him out.

You do NOT have to put up with being spammed.

Redstone