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A federal court in Atlanta sided with Internet services provider EarthLink against KSTM, a Nevada firm accused of massively spamming EarthLink customers.
Mass mailings of mortgage marketing messages met a multi-million dollar ending in court after EarthLink won an $11 million judgment. KSTM had been accused of violating the CAN-SPAM Act, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Georgia Computer Systems Protection Act and state and federal racketeering laws.
EarthLink said in a statement announcing the decision that KSTM sent millions of illegal mortgage-related junk emails promoting the Website 'lmlgdnhk.info'. "This judgment should be fair warning that if you spam, we will sue," said Larry Slovensky, Assistant General Counsel for EarthLink.
KSTM has to be on its best behavior now. They could face charges of contempt if they engage in any of the following email activities:
• falsifying the "from" field in the e-mail address (spoofing)
• hiding the identity of the email sender (cloaking)
• selling e-mail addresses
• accessing or obtaining EarthLink accounts
EarthLink said it has netted a couple of convictions against spammers, as well as winning judgments of over $200 million against hundreds of other spammers they have sued.
Plenty of other spammers are out there running a multitude of ploys. One current message making the rounds as noted by security firm Sophos asks people to forward the junk messages they receive to the requestor, who claims to be running a research project into chain mail and jokes that others tend to forward.
Instead of a research project, Sophos said this is a trick to harvest valid email addresses from those forwarded messages. "Spammers need email addresses like a fish needs water. Without details of 'live' email addresses they struggle to get their unwanted marketing messages in front of their potential customers," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"Under the pretense of 'research' spammers are trying to fool Internet users into passing on dozens of email addresses with every message they forward. At best this could result in spam being sent to all of your friends and colleagues, at worst they could be put at risk of identity theft."
About
the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer with WebProNews.
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