14 DAY TRIAL // Do you have a lot of money in your bank account? No? Then don't spam! Not only that crime doesn't pay, but now it costs as well. A lot of countries have severe laws against spam and other Internet-related activities, but a new law in New Zealand hits spammers really hard.
Their mentality is something like "So, you want to spam, eh? Well, please do, and play the state a fine of $200,000!". That is a huge sum and it's meant to stop spam coming from individual users. Companies have to pay more than double - a total sum of half a million dollars. If this won't discourage spam, I don't know what will!
The greatest part about this is the fact that it doesn't limit itself to e-mail based spam. It covers ALL electronic messages (yes, even IMs) as well as SMS texts. But it stops there, it does not regard phone calls and faxes. So, even if you're in New Zealand, you're still going to receive those annoying calls from your bank in which they let you know of their newest services.
The real bad part about this is the fact that hackers use botnets for spam, so if your computer gets hacked and turned into a spam-zombie - it's bad! Such infected machines send spam messages all day, so you could be a spammer and not even know it. If you don't have the latest security measures on your PC, you just might be asked to prove that you have been spamming because you were part of a botnet or support the consequences, which is paying $200,000. So, if you can't prove that you're innocent, you have to pay the fine - that does not sound so good, especially for those of you that are not tech-savvy, doesn't it?