Re: What to do if you find that you did business with a spammer?

On Thu, Nov 17, 2005, Omer Zak wrote about "[hackers-il] What to do if you find 
that you did business with a spammer?":
> Recently I got spam E-mail advertising service provided by a company
> (which I'll leave nameless for now), with whom I almost subcontracted
> few months ago to do a project for them.

For me, something even worse happened: I got spam from a company in which
I was working in! This was genuine spam, not some company-related mail (i.e.,
I got it to an email they weren't supposed to know about).
> 
> 1. Would this tarnish your own reputation by your being associated with
> the spammer?

Indeed. This is why I immediately wrote to the CEO about this incident.
His "excuse" was that some sort of distributer or whatever sent out this
spam, and that it didn't come from within the company, and he can't do
anything about it.

> 2. Assuming that you do not mind the loss of contracted for payment,
> what is involved in stopping work for them immediately?
> 3. If you are employee of a company which turns out to be spammer, can
> you resign and demand severance pay (your employment conditions
> deteriorated because your neighbors and friends are upset with you)?

I have no idea, nor do I care, about these legalities. In most "high-tech"
companies, "severance pay" works through a "bituch menahalim", which you
get regardless of whether you quit or get fired, so this is not an issue.

> It seems that future contracts would need to contain a clause promising
> that neither side would engage in spamming, even if they are not
> directly related to Internet service provision.

I don't think this is at all specific to spamming - the company might be
involved in other issues you consider immoral and you'll also find it out
later. For example, imagine your company sells stuff to "bad" regimes
somewhere, your company involved in racist or sexual discrimination,
your company making use of child-labor or sweat shops in its china branch,
your company making it a habit to lie to customers and give them shoddy
products, your company doing experiments on monkeys, and so on, and so on.
All of these can also disgrace you personally (image, for example, how
employees of Remedia must feel!), and any of these can cause you to decide
that that's not a company you want to work for - and you obviously can't
include a list in your contract of everything that you find immoral...

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |   Thursday, Nov 17 2005, 15 Heshvan 5766
nyh-TS7m/3hpY0sOpacJJkBjfT4kX+cae0hd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx             
|-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Martin Luther King said "I have a dream",
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |not "I have a plan".


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