Section 66A of the amended Act provides for punishment of imprisonment up to three years and fine for sending spam or unsolicited e-mail messages through computer resource or communication device. This was stated by the Minister of State for Communications & Information Technology, Sachin Pilot in a written reply in Rajjya Sabha.

The MoS mentioned that the government is aware of the spam e-mails, fake SMSs or unsolicited messages being received by people in their inbox or mobile phones.

The contents of such unsolicited messages may range from scams, false anti virus notifications, pornography material, illegal medicines, chain letters and religious or political spam. ‘Nigerian Letter Fraud’, Phishing and Pyramid Scams are some of the Cyber Crimes, in which spam messages are used for commercial exploitation and cheating the recipients of such messages.

According to an International report on “Internet Security”, approximately 88% of e-mail traffic, worldwide, amounts to spam. Out of total spam emails, around 30% are related to financial and fraud/scam emails. Largely compromised computer systems known as “spam bots” are responsible for generating majority of spam mail traffic. The spam traffic originating from India is only 4% of total spam e-mail messages generated worldwide.

The Information Technology Act, 2000 has already been amended by the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 with effect from 27.10.2009.  The Act is applicable to whole of India and the cases relating to this section can be lodged at police stations all across the country.