Hundreds of Spammers Sued

SlyCin56 · #1 (**permalink**) 10th-March-2004, 04:46 PM

They're even suing out of the US, so everyone better watch their mailing lists and mailouts!!

Quote:

E-mail providers sue under new US anti-spam law

Wednesday March 10, 2:52 PM EST

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - Four of the nation's largest e-mail providers said on Wednesday they had sued hundreds of online marketers under a new federal law that outlaws the worst kinds of "spam" e-mail.

The lawsuits -- filed by EarthLink Inc. (ELNK), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Time Warner Inc. (TWX) unit America Online -- mark the first time the law has been tested since it took effect in January.

Six suits were filed in federal courts in California, Georgia, Virginia and Washington state. They claim the defendants obscured their identities and used other deceptive tactics to send out hundreds of millions of pitches for get-rich-quick schemes, pornography and other types of spam.

Spam accounts for roughly half of all e-mail traffic, Internet providers say, driving up bandwidth costs and frustrating customers.

Company officials said the CAN-SPAM Act, passed last year, makes their fight easier by imposing national standards and increasing penalties to force spammers out of business.

"The lawsuits we file now have some added punch they didn't have before," AOL General Counsel Randall Boe told reporters at a news conference.

The lawsuits filed Tuesday night invoke a wide array of federal and state laws, from trespass to trademark and organized crime statutes. But much of the behavior in question is specifically outlawed by CAN-SPAM.

Defendants falsified return addresses, routed their messages through other computers to cover their tracks, and used misleading subject lines like "important message from AOL," the lawsuits charged. Many did not include physical addresses or a way to unsubscribe from the mailing list, as required by the law.

One group of defendants in Canada sent nearly 100 million messages to Yahoo customers in January alone and resold the e-mail addresses of those who asked to be taken off their mailing list, according to one lawsuit.

Eric Head, Matthew Head and Barry Head of Kitchener, Ontario, also tried to circumvent spam filters by including randomized, invisible text in each message, the lawsuit alleged.

The defendants could not be reached for comment.

Officials from the four companies said they worked together to track down the defendants and made sure that their lawsuits did not overlap. The companies are also working on technical methods to more effectively weed out spam but have not yet settled on a common standard.

They said they expected foreign defendants could be held accountable under the U.S. law.

More than 200 defendants were called "John Doe" in filings, as investigators do not know their names. Officials said they expect to eventually uncover their identities.

The civil suits filed by the e-mail providers seek unspecified amounts of damages and penalties. Violators could also face jail time under the new law, though government prosecutors have filed no criminal charges yet.

"Every major case we've filed, we've definitely had law-enforcement interest and generally followed up, so I expect something will come out of this as well," said EarthLink Chief Privacy Officer Les Seagraves.

Officials with the Federal Trade Commission and the FBI were not immediately available for comment.

Lawmakers who drafted the statute, as well as technology and marketing groups that had pushed for its passage, praised the legal actions.