Look before you leap-into using some traffic generating system

There are a lot of traffic generating tools being promoted out there and they can look tempting.  The truth is that the large majority of these tools are spam generators and using them can make you a criminal.  Spam is against the law.  Look up the Can Spam Act of 2003 if you don’t believe me.  It started with email.  You cannot send unsolicited commercial emails to anyone without express (written) permission.  The exception to this would be if someone you know and have a relationship with expressed interest or a real leads list.  Simply collecting email addresses is not a real leads list.  You can report unsolicited e-mail by fowarding it to spam@uce.gov.

Since the Can Spam Act was first passed it has been expanded.  You cannot send recorded commercial messages by phone(Landline or cellphone) without express written permission from the recipient.  The National Do Not Call Registry has a very simple online reporting process.  If you dial 100 numbers with your autodialler and you do not have that permission that is 100 reports that can be generated on you for spam.

Two more forms of spam that are getting out of hand is SPIM, spam by Instant Messenger (for example, Yahoo etc), and SPIT Spam over Internet Telephony(VOIP).  The Can Spam act has been interpreted to cover both of these also.

And then there is M-Spam.  This is spamming by Text message.  Not only is this type of spam inconvenient it is also costly to the recipient.  Unless someone has unlimited texting, the recipients will have to pay fees for these spam messages that you are sending out to them.

Before you jump on that tool, be it an autodialler,  or software designed to harest and collect contact info from Instant messaging services such as Skype, do your homework.  The person promoting it is not going to list all the laws you will be breaking or the fines you may have to pay.  Look for yourself because those fines are going to fall on your head, not theirs.

If you don’t think Spam is a problem take a look at this table available on Wikipedia  which shows how many spam messages are generated each year.  Yes that is Trillions with a T!

 A 2009 Cisco Systems report lists the origin of spam by country as follows:^[10]