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HOME>WEBMASTER RESOURCE>LATEST NEWS>FTC FILES SUIT AGAINST SENDER OF PORN 'SPAM' |
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| FTC FILES SUIT AGAINST SENDER OF PORN 'SPAM' By
Jonathan Krim
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Illinois, alleges Brian D. Westby of Missouri violated federal laws by sending e-mail whose deceptive subject lines, such as "What is wrong?" and "Fwd: You may want to reboot your computer," camouflaged the actual content: images of scantily clad women and links to 20 porn Web sites Westby operated, many of them featuring "married but lonely" women. FTC officials said its spam database, which is receiving about 120,000 e-mails per day forwarded by citizens, collected 46,000 from Westby's various endeavors. The agency further alleged Westby used "spoofing" -- a common spammer practice that disguises the Internet address of the computer that sends the spam -- and provided a means of unsubscribing from e-mail lists that did not work. The complaint said Westby has netted more than $1 million from his porn operations. Spammers often change their locations frequently, and telephone numbers listed for Westby in Internet registration data were either disconnected or were not answered. Some of his Web sites no longer operating. Steven M. Wernikoff, an FTC lawyer based in Chicago, said notice of the suit was served at Westby's home in Ballwin, Mo., but he did not know if Westby was there at the time. The agency is seeking temporary and permanent injunctions against the spam, as well as financial damages to redress consumer harm and to reclaim "ill-gotten gains." A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Although the FTC has been actively collecting spam data, it has not filed many lawsuits focused on junk e-mail itself. The Westby suit is the first to attack a spammer for fraudulent subject lines, and the second relating to spoofing and deceptive means of unsubscribing. No federal laws govern spam, so the FTC is invoking laws against fraudulent business practices. "We are definitely looking to go after the most deceptive spam we can find," said Brian Huseman, a senior FTC lawyer. The agency is organizing a symposium on spam for late this month, and Huseman promised more litigation this year. Spam has grown exponentially in the past 18 months, jumping from roughly 8 percent of all e-mail traffic in late 2001 to about 40 percent today. Among other tools, spammers use computer "robots" to scan the Internet and "scrape" e-mail addresses from Web pages, which are then added to lists that receive spam. To test the technique's effectiveness, Huseman said, the FTC created special e-mail accounts to see how much spam they would attract. Nine minutes after posting a comment in an Internet chat room using one of the e-mail addresses, spam began arriving, Huseman said. In its court filings, the agency also documented how spoofing can damage unsuspecting third parties whose Internet addresses are falsely listed as the originators of spam. E-mail sent to nonworking addresses bounces back to the originator, deluging the spoofing victim with e-mail. And those who receive the spam often vent their anger at the originator. "Two consumers whose individual e-mail addresses Defendant spoofed received well over 100 bounced messages in a week, as well as numerous e-mails from spam recipients accusing the spoofing victims of spamming," according to the filings. SOURCE>WASHINGTONPOST.COM |
