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Six lawsuits target 'biggest, baddest, most notorious' spammers

By Susan Decker
Bloomberg News

	STEPHEN J. BOITANO / AP Executives from AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft and Yahoo! announce the filing of six lawsuits against alleged spammers who sent unwanted e-mails in violation of U.S. law.
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The Redmond software maker coordinated the legal action with America Online, Yahoo! and EarthLink. The six suits they filed in California, Georgia, Virginia and Washington state — the states where the four are based — are the first filed under the "CAN-SPAM Act," which took effect Jan. 1, the companies said at a news conference yesterday in Washington. The suits target spammers who send hundreds of millions of unsolicited e-mails peddling such products as virility pills, cheap loans and pornography.

"We're trying to hit the biggest, the baddest and the most notorious," AOL General Counsel Randall Boe said. The suits are "the fruit of our efforts to ID the spammers, track them down and sue them. The next step will be to put them out of business."

The firms said that the lawsuits are the first major results of a consortium they formed last spring to battle spam. The companies also are working on technology solutions to curb unwanted e-mail, but they have so far not agreed on common standards for changing how e-mail is identified so that spam can be more effectively weeded out.

Suing spammers is becoming a common legal strategy for Microsoft. The company filed six lawsuits against spammers in December, including one against Scott Richter, allegedly one of the most prolific spammers in the world. That case is still pending in federal court in Washington.

Last June, Microsoft filed 15 suits against spammers alleged to have sent illegal and fraudulent messages to MSN and Hotmail users.

The explosion of unwanted messages has become a major expense for businesses and source of annoyance for Internet users. U.S. companies spent $785 million last year to block spam and protect their networks from viruses, according to research firm Gartner.

About 62 percent of all Internet mail was identified as spam in February, up from 45 percent in March 2003, according to Brightmail, which develops anti-spam technology.

The spammers are identified through the companies whose products are being offered and by "following the money," said Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Nancy Anderson.

The targets of the lawsuits are accused of falsifying return e-mail addresses, sending spam through third-party computers to disguise the origin of messages and failing to provide electronic unsubscribe options, all in violation of the CAN-SPAM law.

The law, Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, increased the penalties and set additional limits on bulk e-mails. The law allows e-mail service providers to seek damages of $25 and $100 for each piece of spam.
 
"Spammers have been trying to squeeze the last little bit of profit out of this business model, and it's getting harder and harder for them," said Paul Judge, chief technology officer with CipherTrust of Atlanta, which filters e-mail for more than 800 companies. "The lawsuits are going to make it more costly to run these operations," he said.

Skeptics, however, say the law doesn't go far enough in stopping pernicious spammers. While this is the first set of suits since the law was passed, AOL, EarthLink and the other e-mail providers have filed civil suits against alleged spammers.

"The biggest spammers have faced numerous lawsuits, and they're still spamming," said Ray Everett-Church, chief privacy officer of the consulting firm ePrivacy Group. "When one of them dies, another assumes the throne. You can't sue spammers fast enough to have a real impact in your mailbox."

The Direct Marketing Association, a trade group for businesses that sell products and services by mail, telephone or the Internet, said the suits demonstrate the law is working.

"Spammers have long thought they could hide forever in the shadows of cyberspace and continue to commit their crimes," said H. Robert Wientzen, the trade group's chief executive officer. "Now they will start to realize that they can, and will, be found, and there will be serious consequences when that happens."

The four companies pooled information to investigate leads, track e-mails and identify the worst offenders.

Yahoo! sued three Canadian men who represent "the greatest single source of disruption on the Yahoo! network," with 100 million spam e-mails sent each month just through Yahoo!, said Mike Callahan, the company's general counsel.

Targets of the suits include many who use overseas computers to avoid the U.S. legal system, said Microsoft's Anderson. A Microsoft lawsuit claims spammers used domains registered to people in Argentina, Turkey, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Lithuania and India. "Most of the people actually reside in the U.S. and just put the computers offshore," she said.

Most of those named in the lawsuits are identified as "John Does" or with what are believed to be fictitious names. Lawyers for the companies said they will be able to track down the people sued. "We're only a couple of subpoenas away from standing at someone's door," EarthLink General Counsel Les Seagraves said.

Information from Seattle Times technology reporter Kim Peterson and The Washington Post is included in this report.

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