Massachusetts settles its first antispam case
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A Florida man and his company will pay a $25,000 fine to settle a spam lawsuit brought in Massachusetts in the first use by a state of the federal CAN-SPAM Act.
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By The Roanoke Times, Va.  Sep. 8--The Virginia Court of appeals this week upheld protections for people tired of spam in their e-mail inboxes. A state crackdown, however, will not much dent the spam machine. Effective federal legislation and enforcement is required.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. agreed to pay California $14.5 million to settle state civil claims over its eavesdropping scandal.
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Two Massachusetts brokerage firms each agreed to pay $250,000 and to be censured to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that they failed to supervise former representative Bradford J. Bleidt, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to charges he cheated investors out of millions of dollars.
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The Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld yesterday what is believed to be the first conviction in the nation under a state anti-spamming law that makes it a felony to send unsolicited mass e-mails.
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A man was convicted in a Virginia court on Wednesday of sending AOL users millions of unsolicited emails using fraudulent email address is facing nine years in prison after becoming the first person to be convicted under new anti-spam laws.
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Secure Computing will pay a total of $1 million to settle Washington state's first spyware case.
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New service helps companies thwart online scams.
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(InfoWorld) - The operator of two computer privacy services has agreed to pay up to $1 million in refunds to customers to settle charges of using deceptive marketing techniques and selling the customer's personal information. Consumer Digital Services, which sold the Privasafe and SurfSafe software and services, has agreed to pay $300,000 in fines and legal fees and offer refunds to Washington state consumers who were billed for their products, according to Katherine Tassi, assistant attorney general for Washington. Terms of the settlement were outlined in a consent decree filed Thursday in King County Superior Court in Seattle. Consumer Digital Services is controlled by Gary Salmirs, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who is also named in the settlement. The state alleges that the company violated state consumer protection laws, but neither Salmirs nor the company admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement, Tassi said. According to her, the company lured customers with offers of free gift cards, flat-screen monitors, andÂ software, promoted through pop-up ads and e-mail. Customers handed over personal informationÂ such asÂ addresses, telephone numbers, and dates of birth, thinking that they were getting a free product. "What they actually were doing was signing up for a paid service," Tassi said. Thousands of consumers received unexpected $14.95-per-month charges for the company's software and services, and almost nobody got a free gift card or flat-screen monitor. "Our investigation showed that only one of the over 13,000 Washington consumers ever actually got this free item," Tassi said. Consumers didn't have to hand over credit card information in order to be billed because the charges were tacked on to regular monthly telephone bills, she added. Last year, the Florida attorney general investigated a company called Email Discount Network for engaging in similar billing practices, Tassi said. Consumer Digital Services took its Web sites offline sometime during the past month, Tassi said. But according to cached copies of these sites, the company said that its products would remove spyware, protect consumers against "unscrupulous marketers," make Internet surfers anonymous, and even boost connection speeds. In fact, the "exact opposite" occurred, Tassi said. "They actually were compiling a huge database of consumer information that could be used for marketing purposes," she said. This data was eventually sold to marketing companies, she added. Washington state residents who were billed for Privasafe or SurfSafe products since Jan. 1, 2004, can get their money refunded and will be contacted by Consumer Digital Services. The company could not be reached immediately for comment.
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(InfoWorld) - An Internet business that sold people's telephone and credit-card records has agreed to settle charges that it violated U.S. law, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Thursday. Integrity Security & Investigation Services and its owner, Edmund Edmister, will give up $2,700, the entire amount the company earned from selling phone records and credit card transaction reports, the FTC said. The settlement also bars the company from obtaining and selling confidential phone and credit account records unless authorized by law or court order. The FTC in MayÂ filed federal court complaintsÂ against five Web-based operations allegedly engaged in pretexting, attempting to obtain phone or other personal records from companies by pretending to be the targeted customer. Integrity Security & Investigation Services is the first firm to settle with the FTC; charges are still pending against the four remaining companies. The U.S. Congress has beenÂ investigating pretextingÂ since early this year, but the practice gained national attention last month whenÂ Hewlett-Packard officials revealedÂ pretexting had been used to gain access to the phone records of employees, board members and journalists. Private investigators employed by HP allegedly used pretexting in an investigation of board leaks in 2005 and 2006. The agency dismissed charges against F. Lynne Moseley and Tracey Edmister, Integrity Security & Investigation Services corporate officers. The FTC determined they played no role in operating the business.
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State says it has made a deal with PC maker over civil charges related to methods used in an HP leak investigation.
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The FTC has won a settlement against a spyware operation responsible for installing malware on users' computers that tracked Internet activity, changed home-page settings and inserted a large frame onto browser windows that displayed ads.
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Manager of an antispam blacklist was hit with a multimillion dollar judgment, but the order may not be enforceable.
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Microsoft said yesterday that it had finally laid to rest the anti-trust case against it in the United States when it reached an agreement with the Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association, the final group seeking to overturn itssettlement with the
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The Securities and Exchange Commission approved settlements with Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Mercury Interactive Corp. , the first companies to be fined since the government's crackdown on illegal stock options backdating began more than a year ago.
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A judge has ruled that Maryland's anti-spam law &#151; the first state law to penalize senders of junk e-mail &#151; is unconstitutional because it seeks to regulate commerce outside the state's borders.
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Secure Computer agrees to pay $1 million to settle charges that it violated Washington state's spyware law.