FTC Charges Companies With CAN-SPAM Porn Violations
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ompanies, five individuals allegedly violated rule requiring labeling of adult-themed e-mail.
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The US Federal Trade Commission filed a legal complaint last week against two companies that are believed to have infected computers with spyware and pop-up advertising and then attempted to sell their ownersâ anti-spyware software.
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Facebook is suing seventeen people and a Canadian Internet porn company for allegedly trying to mine the popular social networking site for its users&#39; personal details.Facebook alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used automated scripts to make more than 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook&#39;s site. The allegations are contained in an amended lawsuit filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.The company first filed suit back in June, but amended the complaint this month after obtaining court orders to identify who controlled the servers trying to access its site.Experts have warned people against publishing too much personal information on social networking sites for fear it could be collected and then abused by fraudsters.Facebook, one of the most-used social networking sites after MySpace, said the automated scripts caused error messages to be generated, but the company did not say if user information was successfully collected.Named in the suit is Istra Holdings, which controls SlickCash.com, an affiliate advertising business that offers commissions to Web publishers for referring Internet surfers to its portfolio of adult sites.It also names Brian Fabian and Josh Raskin, both of whom the suit says work at Istra in Toronto, and Ming Wu of Markham, Ontario, as well as 14 other unidentified people.Facebook said the hacking attempts cost it at least US$5,000 to investigate. The company has requested a jury trial and is seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future, in addition to damages.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - An operation that allegedly installed illegal spyware on computers will give more than US$2 million to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint. The FTC has obtained a settlement order against Enternet Media Inc., Conspy & Co. Inc., Lida Rohbani, Nima Hakimi and Baback Hakimi, all based in California, the agency announced Wednesday. The defendants distributed software called Search Miracle, Miracle Search, EM Toolbar, EliteBar and Elite Toolbar, the FTC said. In an order issued by Judge Christine Snyder of the U.S District Court for Central California, the defendants are prohibited from interfering with computer use, such as distributing software code that tracks Internet activity, changes browser settings and inserts new advertising toolbars onto browsers. The defendants also are permanently prohibited from making misleading representations regarding the performance, features, and cost, of any software, including misrepresenting that the code is an Internet browser upgrade or other computer security software, music, song, lyric or cell phone ring tone. The Web sites of the defendants and their affiliates caused installation boxes to pop up on consumersâ computer screens, the FTC said in its complaint. In one variation of the scheme, the boxes offered a variety of freeware, including music files, cell phone ring tones, photographs, wallpaper and song lyrics. In another, the boxes warned that consumersâ Internet browsers were defective, and offered free browser upgrades or security patches. Users who downloaded the supposed freeware or security upgrades did not receive what they were promised, Instead, their computers were infected with spyware that interfered with their computers and was difficult to uninstall, the FTC said. The defendants' software tracked Internet activity, changed home-page settings and inserted a large frame onto browser windows that displayed advertisements, the FTC said. At the FTCâs request, the court froze the operationâs assets last fall and ordered it shut down. The settlement requires the defendants to give up just over $2 million of their spyware-related profits and includes a suspended judgment of $8.5 million. The FTC brought the case with assistance from Microsoft Corp., Webroot Software Inc. and Google Inc., the agency said.
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StopBadware.org and Center for Democracy and Technology file FTC complaint against FastMP3Search.
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Canned by CAN-SPAM Two men who ran a spam operation to promote pornographic websites had the book thrown at them today. A federal jury in Phoenix, Arizona convicted Jeffrey Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California and James Schaffer, 41 of Paradise Valley, Arizona of eight counts, including conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and transportation of obscene materials.â¦
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun mailing claim forms to more than 1,400 identity theft victims who spent money to clear up identity-theft problems due to a security breach at data broker ChoicePoint announced in early 2005.
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Sanctions against botnet operators The Federal Trade Commission, the US consumer rights watchdog, has succeeded in shutting down four illegal spamming operations judged to have breached federal anti-spam laws. Targets of the lawsuits included an operation that offered the supposed chance to "date lonely wives" and two outfits that allegedly bombarded unwilling recipients with lurid ads for pornographic web sites, sent via compromised PCs.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - An Internet-based provider of sexually explicit entertainment has agreed to pay a $465,000 civil penalty for sending unwanted e-mail, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The settlement with TJ Web Productions is the fifth after the FTC announced a crackdown on sexually explicit e-mail spam in July 2005, when the agency charged seven companies with violating a U.S. law requiring warning labels on sexually explicit e-mail. Sexually explicit e-mails sent by TJ Web affiliates have been "widely distributed" since May 2004, according to an FTC complaint. Including the TJ Web settlement, the FTC has collected more than $1.6 million in civil penalties from the five companies, the FTC said. The FTCâs Adult Labeling Rule and the CAN-SPAM Act, passed by Congress in late 2003, require commercial e-mailers of sexually explicit material to use the phrase, "sexually explicit," in the subject line, and to ensure that the initially viewable area of the message does not contain graphic sexual images. The rule and the law also require that unsolicited commercial e-mail give recipients a way to opt out of receiving future e-mail and provide a postal address. Under the proposed settlement, TJ Web is permanently prohibited from violating the FTCâs Adult Labeling Rule. The company also is permanently prohibited from violating the CAN-SPAM Act by initiating commercial e-mail without clearly and conspicuously displaying a physical postal address and also without including an opt-out mechanism. TJ Web, based in Henderson, Nevada, did not send e-mail directly to consumers, but it operated an affiliate marketing program and paid others to send e-mail on its behalf, the FTC said. TJ Web operates "dozens" of adult Web sites containing sexually explicit photographs and videos, according to the FTC complaint. The proposed settlement, which requires court approval, also forces TJ Web to obtain agreement from affiliates that they will comply with the terms of the court order. Although TJ Web has a Web site, there is no contact information listed, nor does the company have a published telephone number, so no one there could be reached for comment.
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An online advertiser that drove traffic to its Web sites by sending out spam with misleading subject lines has agreed to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;complaint charging that it failed to tell consumers they had to spend money to receive so-called free products, the FTC announced Wednesday.The settlement requires Member Source Media to disclose the costs and obligations associated with the advertised products and services, and bars the company from sending e-mail that violates the CAN-SPAM Act, which regulates the sending of unsolicited e-mail. The company must also pay $200,000 in civil penalties, according to the settlement approved Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.Member Source Media -- doing business as ConsumerGain.com, PremiumPerks.com, FreeRetailRewards.com, and GreatAmericanGiveaways.com -- and the company&#8217;s owner, Chris Sommer, used deceptive spam and online advertising to lure customers to its Web sites, the FTC alleged.The company used e-mail subject lines such as, &quot;Congratulations. You&#39;ve won an iPod Video Player,&quot; &quot;Here are 2 free iPod Nanos for You: confirm now,&quot; and &quot;Second Attempt: Target Gift Card Inside,&quot; the FTC said in a press release. The company&#39;s Web-based ads contained similar offers: &quot;CONGRATULATIONS! You Have Been Chosen To Receive a FREE GATEWAY LAPTOP.&quot;When consumers arrived at Member Source Media&#39;s Web pages, they were led through a series of ads for goods and services from third parties.To qualify for their &quot;free products,&quot; consumers would have to first wade through pages of &quot;optional&quot; offers. Once they navigated those pages, they had to participate in a series of third-party promotions requiring them to do things such as purchase products, subscribe to satellite television service, or apply for multiple credit cards, the FTC said.Member Source Media&#39;s failure to disclose material facts was deceptive and violated the FTC Act, the FTC said. In addition, the agency charged that deceptive subject lines in Member Source Media&#39;s spam e-mails violated the federal CAN-SPAM Act.The settlement requires that Member Source Media clearly disclose in its ads and on its Web pages that consumers have to spend money or incur other obligations to qualify for a free product or service. The settlement also requires the company to provide a list of the obligations a consumer is likely to incur to qualify for their chosen item -- such as applying for credit cards or purchasing products.
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A so-called typosquatter who served pornographic advertisements on domains such as Bobthebiulder.com and teltubbies.com has been fined again by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
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The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a legal complaint against two companies that allegedly infected computers with spyware and pop-up advertising, then tried to sell spyware-blocking software.
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Joining America Online, EarthLink and Yahoo against spamming, Microsoft Corp. today announced the filing of three new anti-Spam lawsuits under the CAN-SPAM federal law as part of its initiative in solving the Spam problem for Internet users worldwide.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down four illegal e-mail spamming operations, including one that offered the opportunity to "date lonely wives," the agency said Thursday. Two of the other operations sending unwanted commercial e-mail hijacked the computers of third parties and used them to spam customers with sexually explicit e-mail, the FTC said Thursday. The FTC charged the four operations with violating the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act. Federal courts in Illinois and Arizona approved the FTC request to shut down the operations. Cleverlink Trading Ltd. and its partners will give up US$400,000 in spam-related gains to settle FTC charges that e-mail from them or their affiliates violated federal law. The FTC sued the group, saying their "date lonely wives" spam violated nearly every provision of the CAN-SPAM Act. Cleverlink's e-mail contained misleading headers and deceptive subject lines, it did not contain a link to allow consumers to opt out of receiving future spam, did not contain a valid physical postal address and did not contain the disclosure that it was sexually explicit, the FTC said. It also included sexual materials in the initially viewable area of the e-mail, in violation of the FTCâs adult labeling rule. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division halted the operation and froze the defendants' assets. The court approved a settlement with Cleverlink and four other defendants in July. In a second case, the FTC charged that Zachary Kinion sent spam hawking adult sites, mortgage rates and privacy software and paid other spammers commissions to send spam messages for him. Kinion hid his true originating address by routing his spam through the computers of innocent third parties, the FTC said. The FTC charged him with violations of the CAN-SPAM Act, and the Illinois court ordered him to halt his e-mail operations. A settlement, which the FTC agreed to in June, includes a judgment of $151,000, suspended because of Kinion's inability to pay, the FTC said. Another spam operation used "spam zombies" -- computers used without their ownersâ knowledge -- to conceal the source of sexually explicit spam. Defendants William Dugger, Angelina Johnson and John Vitale also violated the adult labeling rule, the FTC said. The settlement, approved in July by the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, requires the three defendants to give up $8,000 in spam-related profits, and it requires them to obtain permission from other people's computers before using them to send e-mail. The fourth spam operation used spam to drive traffic to Web sites by third parties, the FTC said. Brian McMullen, doing business as BM Entertainment and B Pimp, routed his promotions for pharmaceuticals and adult content through unwitting consumersâ computers, the FTC said. A settlement approved by the Illinois court in July imposes a judgment of $24,193, suspended based on McMullen's inability to pay, the FTC said. In addition, he has pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to spam and unauthorized possession of credit cards. He currently is awaiting sentencing.
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(InfoWorld) - Two consumer protection groups are asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate FastMP3Search.com.ar, a Web site that distributes software that can be used to search for digital music on the Web. The FastMP3Search plugin disables the Windows Firewall, installs adware and Trojan horse programs, and generally hobbles the user's PC, said John Palfrey, the Harvard Law School professor who is StopBadware.org's co-director. The software is also virtually impossible to remove once installed, he added. StopBadware.org and the Center for Democracy and Technology plan to file a formal complaint with the FTC on Thursday. "We are asking the FTC to take a close look at an application that we consider to be the worst of the bad applications that we've seen over the course of the last year," Palfrey said. Representatives from FastMP3Search.com.ar could not be reached immediately for comment. The Web site is registered to a company called Direct S.A., based in Buenos Aires, according to the Network Information Center Argentina domain name database. StopBadware.org was also unable to reach representatives from the company before filing its complaint Palfrey said. The company's Web site tells users that the software will provide a fast way to search the Internet for downloadable music files, "in exchange for your agreement to also install our plugin software, which may occasionally display ads on your computer." Although the FTC has sought court orders to shut down Web sites in the past, the fact that FastMP3Search.com.ar appears to be based in Argentina complicates matters, Palfrey admitted. Still the FTC has worked on international efforts to fight spam and online fraud. "When an application is hosted outside of the U.S., but is plainly affecting U.S. consumers, they can coordinate with other governments," Palfrey said. "We would hope that they would start an investigation of this application." FTC representatives could not be reached immediately for comment. Formed earlier this year with funding from Google Inc. Lenovo Group Ltd., and Sun Microsystems Inc., StopBadware.org has issued reports on dozens of software products that engage in questionable or downright malicious behavior. It has exposed problems in everything from Kazaa to the Jessica Simpson Screensaver, to AOL LLC's free client.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.
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Authorities in the US are considering a $250,000 bounty on spammers in an attempt to close them down. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has suggested rewards of anything from $100,000 to $250,000 for information.