RSSLeading ISPs File Six Lawsuits Against Spammers
By David Worthington | Published March 10, 2004, 11:18 PM
Armed with the CAN-SPAM act, leading Internet service providers have banded together to collaborate and coordinate their anti-spam efforts. The first step in this approach was announced today by senior executives of America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, who collectively sued hundreds of the United States' most prolific spammers.
The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act outlaws tactics favored by spammers to flood inboxes with unsolicited mail, while also providing new enforcement mechanisms for law enforcement. The law went into affect January 1, 2004.
Six lawsuits were filed in Federal Courts in California, Georgia, Virginia, and Washington State alleging fraud, deceit and evasion. Specifically, e-mails containing deceptive solicitations ranging from get-rich-quick schemes to the sale of prescription drugs online were targeted.
Other alleged violations of CAN SPAM were the use of open proxies, spoofed e-mail addresses, the absence of physical addresses, and the failure to include an option to unsubscribe from mailing lists.
The total messages sent numbered into the hundreds of millions.
"We're holding spammers directly accountable for the relentless infiltration of people's inboxes. We're acting on behalf of the millions of people who are saying 'enough is enough,'" said Yahoo! Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mike Callahan.
Callahan continued, "With federal legal remedies and industry collaboration, we have a significant new advantage. We are leveraging new legal tools and sharing best practices, sending a signal to spammers that they are facing a more unified front than ever before. This is great news for all consumers."
Despite their unusual showing of good sportsmanship to control spam, Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo! are each adopting different technologies to authenticate SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).
During last month's RSA conference, Microsoft pitched a caller ID system for e-mail, while AOL supports the popular Sender Policy Framework. Yahoo! has independently developed its own "Domain Keys" proposal. Standards groups such as the Internet Engineering Task Force's AntiSpam Research Group (ASRG), have yet to decide on any single method.
Recent builds of MSN and AOL clients have included updated spam filtering technologies. EarthLink also includes services to cut back on spam, and Yahoo! has leveraged its updated search engine technology to enhance its spam fighting capabilities.
There was a united front to force the domain name authorities to require all Advertisers and Porn sites be registered with the ADV and XXX domains respectively, and that would simplify things immensely.
All advertising emails sent must then be from .ADV, porn obviously from .xxx, and then you simply allow or disallow connections from any domains with .xxx or .adv at the mail server level.
Have legislation at the government level (in whatever country you're in, *not just the U.S.*, heck, it would be nice if every country did it) stating if you are sending emails from, or represent those domains (i.e. if you send ANY emails advertising ANYTHING) you must have legitimate domain names and IP's to which those domains are registered to in the emails and email addresses must have the .adv or .xxx extensions, legitimate or you then are liable for each and every message for an exhorbitant amount of money. If you are found to be falsifying emails, then the company/entity that the advertising is FOR must pay. Sure, let's not bother suing the spammers, let's sue the COMPANIES that are FUNDING the spamming. When the spammers run out of customers to serve because everyone's too scared to use mass emailing, then maybe email will come back under control!
Non-legit spammers would stick out like a sore thumb and be a LOT easier to prosecute.
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How about email servers that verify a message's sender before relaying the message - quick and simple. For years the majors have spammed people and given the technology to do it. Maybe time for ISP's instead of suing - to clean up their act.
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It's more than pleasure to see these bas****s rot in hell.
All these pain they brought us are more than the loss of a friend or family member.
These spammers should be shot instead of prison.
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Good for MSN, AOL, YAHOO etc...
These spamming pieces of vomit need to be sued, shutdown and left to cringe at the thought of another way to get money out of people.
I hate spammers, they make me sick, they make me work long hours to try to ban it all.
Thank God someone is busting them up!
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I don't use AOL or MSN, nor would I ever. I like my freedom but this move is a great roadblock against spammers. I think more ISP's should think about fighting them instead of letting the government moving into this sector to control it themselves.
I don't know about Microsofts' idea behind it but I think AOL and Yahoo has a good start.
Either way, whatever methods succeed, I hope companies learn to accept and adopt instead of having many different implementations out there.
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