The unwanted e-mail wars continued yesterday, as America Online, Yahoo! Inc., EarthLink and Microsoft jointly announced several lawsuits against spammers.
The wave of litigation included the first lawsuit expressly targeting instant messenger spam and chatroom spam, aka “spim.” America Online filed that case and one other lawsuit in Federal Court, both naming numerous “John Does” as defendants and alleging violations of Federal and State laws. The other case is the first AOL action against a spammer peddling controlled substances, including Vicodin and other prescription-required pharmaceuticals.
Yahoo! filed a lawsuit against East Coast Exotics Entertainment Group, Inc. and Epoth LLC for unlawfully sending sexually explicit bulk spam e-mail messages to Yahoo! Mail users. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, under the federal Can-Spam law.
The Yahoo! complaint alleged that East Coast and Epoth sent sexually explicit material in the subject lines of e-mail messages; disguised their e-mail identity by including false designations of the originating e-mail addresses; sent from e-mail accounts obtained for the express purpose of sending spam; used misleading header information to disguise the origin of the messages; falsified the transmission path, using open proxies to disguise the origin of the messages; failed to provide a clear option to opt-out from future e-mails; failed to include the physical postal address of the sender in the messages; and failed to indicate the messages were solicitations
EarthLink also filed a lawsuit against numerous “John Doe” defendants who used illegal and deceptive e-mails to advertise drugs available without a legitimate prescription and low mortgage or loan rates, in many cases attempting to collect and re-sell consumers’ names and contact information.
Three lawsuits filed Thursday by Microsoft allege that defendants spoofed the domains of all four Internet service providers and used open proxies to route the e-mails. The defendants — one named and two “John Does” — allegedly sent millions of e-mails soliciting herbal growth supplements, mortgage services and get-rich-quick schemes, all in violation of Can-Spam federal law.
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