Restraining Orders

Although I am not an expert in technology, it may be that a person does not have control over his email when spam is sent, if it is true spam email. It could be that another entity or person hacked into the account and has sent out spam emails to all recipients. Generally, violations of orders of protection may have to be intentional or willful – I can’t speak to your state’s laws on this but I am speaking only generally. Therefore, you may want to ask an attorney if it may possibly be the case that if he had no control over the spam, a law enforcement agency may not be willing to arrest for a violation - I don’t know.

However, I did contact our technology department to ask if a spam message could be a way for another person to put spyware on your computer. In other words, if a program is sent to look like spam and when the person clicks on it, it may open up a spyware program on the recipient’s computer.  They said that you may need a professional to look at the emails to determine if it’s a virus and his email has been spamming multiple people in his contacts without his knowledge or if it’s something else containing malicious spyware (emails phishing for you to click on something so you can install spyware). It could be difficult to tell.

Is there any chance that the guy is on probation or parole. If so, correction officers can easily take a look at his computer to see what has been installed and sent out. Getting law enforcement to look at it would probably tough because they really may not have any grounds to look through the computer. Often times when a computer gets a virus and it has sent out multiple emails to the contact list, those sent emails have actually logged in the sent folder so they knew who they went out to. Seeing something like that in his email account may mean it was spam, but having that access might be impossible. One option might be to talk to some Internet technology people and law enforcement about your questions and suspicions to try to get some clarification as to what they are. Again, if he is on probation or parole, and you think it is safe to do so, you may decide to contact his parole/probation office to see if they would look at his computer.

In the meantime, here are some Internet safety tips that may be helpful:http://www.womenslaw.org/laws_state_type.php