The War on Spam Heats Up

Legal steps being taken against spam have increased considerably. Here are some recent developments: America Online has recently filed five lawsuits against alleged spammers. The spammers are accused of sending approximately 1 billion spam emails promoting mortgages, steroids, and pornography to its subscribers. AOL launched the suits after receiving roughly 8 million individually spam complaints through a "Report Spam" feature that AOL introduced last fall. The identity of some of the spammers is unknown. However, filing the lawsuit has now enabled AOL to subpoena service providers and others to attempt to locate more information on the spammers. For more information, visit: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q1F452F44 An operator of pornographic websites has agreed to stop sending spam with misleading subject lines. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has brought a civil action against Brian D. Westby (the "defendant") under the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC alleges that the defendant's pornographic spam operation was used to drive business to his adult website. The FTC is seeking to secure temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctive relief, restitution, rescission of contracts, disgorgement and other equitable relief for the defendant's deceptive acts or practices. In response to a preliminary motion, brought in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of Illinois (Eastern Division), the defendant has agreed to stop sending deceptive and unsolicited spam. The defendant was alleged to have sent spam with subject lines that disguised the contents of the email. The deceptive subject lines, such as "New movie info" or "Did you hear the news?", were in fact emails containing sexually explicit solicitations to visit the defendant's adult website. The FTC also alleged that the defendant had used false "reply to" or "from" information in the emails, making it appear that that emails were sent from a third party sender, and had blocked the "unsubscribe" function in the e-mails. The FTC has filed approximately 50 related spam complaints to date and the FTC has been successful in each case. For additional information and copies of the relevant documentation, visit: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5697247.htm http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/04/westby.htm http://makeashorterlink.com/?T1D322D44 http://makeashorterlink.com/?X5F321D44 Australia's National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) has released their final report on their review of the spam problem and how it can be countered. The report reviewed the extent of negative impacts caused by spam, the adequacy of the current measures to counter the problem and recommended additional measures that may be required. The report stated that the low cost of sending spam is the single most apparent explanation for its rapid growth. The report also suggested that Australia should pursue a spam reduction strategy which will balance regulatory, self-regulatory, technical and consumer information aspects. Due to the global nature of spam, the reduction strategy is to be supplemented by cooperation with other countries both at the policy and operational level. For a copy of the report, visit: http://makeashorterlink.com/?W2F212D44 Summary by: Kiran Sah