Question about customer email and US law

[dianaward]

Although I take e-gold for web hosting (Since I personally dislike banks and credit card companies, I try to help out those who can't or don't wish to use them.) , I try to police those accounts just to watch for spammers, phishers, etc.

I have a new account who paid with e-gold and has an ambiguous domain name. They haven't yet added content to the site (maybe 3 weeks), though there is email going through it. I've seen some suspicious though not necessarily obviously illegal emails in the mail queue. What I am wondering is whether anyone knows for certain if I could run into privacy violation issues (I'm in the USA) if I do a quick look-see in their sent mail box.

I'm not asking about moral or other issues, I already have my own opinions on those, I just wonder about the legality of such a thing. Any advice, especially experienced advice, on that issue would be welcomed.

 

[nickp666]

as far as im aware as a host you are allowed to check your users mail, provided you have reasonable suspicion that the customer is doing something illegal

 

[NightStorm]

Just for curiousity sake, check http://www.sa-blacklist.stearns.org/sa-blacklist/sa-blacklist.current.domains and see if the domain is on the list. If it is, you have grounds for suspecting it is being used for spam... basically, that list is made up of domaisn that have been used to send spam, or have been referenced inside the spam messages.
If it's there, I would suspend the account pending further investigation (parsing email logs and such).