Leading ISPs File Six Lawsuits Against Spammers
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.