U.S. court halts alleged Web site billing scheme
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. district court has ordered a halt to an operation that allegedly added unauthorized charges to the phone bills of small businesses and nonprofit groups for Web sites services that, in many cases, they didn't know they had and didn't request, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said. Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has approved a temporary restraining order halting the activity and freezing the assets of a group of businesses and individuals, the FTC announced Thursday. The FTC's complaint named defendants WebSource Media, BizSitePro, Eversites, Telsource Solutions, Telsource International, Marc R. Smith, Kathleen A. Smalley, Keith Hendrick, Steven Kennedy, John O. Ring, and James E. McCubbin, Jr. The defendants illegally billed thousands of customers, according to the FTC. The operation was a maze of interrelated companies directed by the people named as defendants, the FTC said. The operation used telemarketers to make cold calls to small businesses and nonprofits, and offered a âfreeâ 15-day trial of a Web site design. The customers were told there was no charge or obligation and that the Web site would be cancelled automatically if it was not approved by them. Whether the customers agreed or not to be billed after the trial, their phone bills were often charged. When consumers called to dispute the charges, the operators told them they had âverification recordingsâ of an employee authorizing the charges. The FTC said the operation is typical of fraudulent Web cramming operations -- by using sales pitches to employees who frequently lack authority to make commitments for their employers and failing to effectively notify consumers that a Web site has been set up. The operators repeatedly changed the names of their companies to avoid detection by telephone companies they rely on to bill consumers and to evade scrutiny from law enforcers, the FTC said.
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A federal court judge on Thursday  dismissed a lawsuit against Google Inc. by disgruntled  advertising customer Kinderstart that had accused the Web  search leader of monopolistic business practices.
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Claiming a victory against X-rated spam, the Federal Trade Commission late Tuesday won an order to shut down illegal Internet advertising for six companies accused of profiting from sexually explicit e-mail.
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A U.S. court in Wyoming has ordered a Web-based information broker to stop selling telephone records without owners&#39; consent and to turn over nearly $200,000 in profits from the operation, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Monday.AccuSearch, doing business as Abika.com, and owner Jay Patel used &quot;false pretenses, fraudulent statements, fraudulent or stolen documents or other misrepresentations&quot; to induce telecom carriers to disclose the confidential records, the FTC said in a news release.Judge William Downes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming ordered the company to stop selling telephone records in a Dec. 20 decision announced Monday. The judge also ordered the company, based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to turn over information so that the FTC can notify the people whose telephone records were sold.Abika.com advertised that it could obtain the confidential phone records of any individual -- including details about outgoing and incoming calls -- and make that information available to customers for a fee, the FTC said in a May 2006 complaint. The FTC charged that the company&#39;s methods of obtaining phone records, including posing as a customer of a telecom carrier, violated the FTC Act, which bars unfair business practices.A representative of Abika.com didn&#39;t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company continues to sell such information&#160;as criminal, tax, mortgage, and driving records through its Web site.The defendants have appealed the order to the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.Downes found that the company&#39;s ways of obtaining phone records without consumers&#39; consent was &quot;necessarily accomplished through illegal means,&quot; and that defendants knew that the phone records were being obtained surreptitiously.The company&#39;s actions caused major problems to consumers, including serious health and safety risks experienced by some consumers from stalkers and abusers; economic harm associated with changing telephone carriers and upgrading security on their accounts; and a host of &quot;substantial and real&quot; emotional harms, the judge said.Consumers had no way to avoid these harms, he wrote. &quot;In fact, the evidence presented before the court indicates that confidential consumer phone records were sold through Abika.com despite considerable efforts by consumers to maintain the privacy of those records,&quot; the judge wrote.Finally, the court found no countervailing benefits to consumers or competition that could be derived from the defendants&#39; practice.Downes also rejected the defendants&#39; claimed immunity under the Communications Decency Act, a federal statute that confers immunity on interactive computer service providers for publishing information content provided by a third party. The judge found that the argument failed partly because the defendants participated in creating the content they sought to have immune from prosecution, the FTC said.
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ONE of the web&#39;s most popular file-sharing sites has shut down less than a week after Hollywood announced a flurry of lawsuits against operators of such Internet servers.
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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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Small mercies A hosting firm caught up in a row over the pay of carers for the elderly has reversed a decision to shut down an online campaign against cuts.â¦
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A federal judge on Friday dismissed an antitrust complaint against a key Internet oversight group brought by a company that controls directories for guiding Internet users worldwide.    U.S...
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WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday curbed investor lawsuits against businesses accused of scheming to inflate stock prices.
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A lawsuit against MySpace has been dismissed by a U.S. District Judge who declared the social-networking site protected under the Communications Decency Act.
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A federal judge on Wednesday  dismissed a key element of insurer GEICO's trademark  infringement case against online search engine Google Inc.  GOOG.O.
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A federal judged ruled that the Web site was not protected by the First Amendment because it incited criminal conduct.
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The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it won a court order to shut down illegal advertising for six companies accused of profiting from thousands of X-rated e-mails directing people to their online pornography sites in the government's first legal case involving adult Internet spam.
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A U.S. district judge has ordered a company to stop sending unsolicited e-mail marketing weight-loss and anti-aging products that allegedly did not work, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Thursday.
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By Eric Benderoff, Chicago Tribune  Sep. 7--A federal lawsuit that pitted a Naperville attorney who wanted to bring class-action status against a company he says puts spyware on personal computers was dismissed Wednesday before reaching trial.
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The US Federal Trade Commission on Thursday asked a federal court to shut down an operation that it said disables users&#39; computers in an attempt to bully them into buying anti-spyware products.
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A home decor merchant has dropped a federal lawsuit attacking Google Inc.'s practice of connecting some online ads to trademarks, handing the Internet search leader its latest legal victory on the prickly issue.