Background Net Abuse is defined as being an abuse of Internet facilities and not necessarily abuse on the Internet. Net Abuse, must interfere with the net-use of an individual or group of individuals in some specific way. Net Abuse also includes activities that are illegal or dishonest. Internet users should understand that when sending email, the recipient in most instances should have already requested the material prior to the email being sent or, that some kind of existing relationship between sender and recipient such as subscribing to a mailing list. Another common form of Net Abuse is the forging of headers or email addresses for commercial gain.
Many Internet users have a dial-up account and pay for additional online time.
It costs them money to receive email. Receipt of unsolicited commercial email ultimately means that they are paying for it and is particularly unwelcome. A Prestel account must not be used to send UCE or as a maildrop to receive responses. The fact that a user posts in a particular newsgroup does not mean that they are specifically requesting information should be emailed to them. Similar to UCE, except there is usually no attempt to sell you anything.