A Trio of Canadian SPAM Kings is in Trouble Again

It was recently reported in E-TIPS® (Volume 3, Number 1, June 23, 2004) that Canadian resident Eric Head, his brother, and his father had settled a lawsuit with Yahoo! Inc. The Heads were running a spamming operation, sending more than 94 million e-mails to users of Yahoo!'s e-mail service in one month alone, when they were sued in March under the US CAN-SPAM legislation. They agreed to stop sending unwanted e-mails and to pay Yahoo! at least US$100,000. However, the "Spam Kings" are in trouble again. The Heads, as well as their Kitchener-based e-mail service company, are being jointly sued by Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. Microsoft has alleged that the defendants opened hundreds of thousands of Hotmail accounts under fictitious names. This then allowed them to send out millions of messages, with fewer than 100 originating from each account. This practice, whereby accounts were used as "covert spam channels", thwarted anti-spam technology and resulted in a massive spamming operation involving millions of messages being sent out daily. Amazon.ca is accusing the Heads of misusing its trade-mark. It alleges that its trade-mark was used to falsely imply that e-mails were sent or endorsed by the company. The suit also asserts that by featuring fake "subject" and "from" lines, the messages violated US anti-spamming law, which prohibits the use of false or misleading subject lines and header information. Counsel for the Heads says that the allegations relate to old news. The suit alleges that the activity had begun by January 1, 2003 but doesn't disclose whether the alleged abuses continued past mid-June, 2004 when the lawsuit with Yahoo! was settled and the Heads claim that the spamming operation ceased. For related news items, see: http://makeashorterlink.com/?W2EE13189; and http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/09/28/phishing/index.php. Summary by: Clare McCurley