It’s one of those stories which one would think that only Kafka could dream up, if it weren’t for the fact that the story is true. Charles Booher was a friendly, unassuming Silicon Valley engineer – like thousands of others in the Valley. However he gained distinction – some would…

This particular FTC action was of note because it was the first which was publicly noted to include charges under the McCain Amendment to CAN-SPAM, on which I worked, and which I like to refer to as the “vendor liability” section, although others call it the “advertiser accountability” section.

Anti-virus firm Sophos has reported that a new virus, Crowt-A, is actually ripping off headlines from CNN, and using them as both the subject line of the spam containing the virus, as well as the file name for the virus payload itself. Not only that, but the virus constantly changes…

From Across the Pond, courtesy of Chris Hunter at Spamfo: Spammers have been using blogs to help boost their standings in search engines by posting massive numbers of comments that include links to their pornography sites, scams and get-rich-quick sites. If your site is linked by a top-ranked site or blog, then…

This isn’t exactly double jeopardy, but somehow it ought to be. Bad enough to receive junk mail from a spammer – but then to receive a junk lawsuit as well? Ptooey! And it is exactly that with which Jay Stuler is dealing. Having received what he considered spam from Atriks,…

Georgia’s Internet citizenry got a treat yesterday as Governor Sonny Perdue introduced legislation aimed at making spamming the good citizens of Georgia (or, indeed, by the good citizens of Georgia) a criminal offense. The proposed legislation, known as the “Georgia Slam Spam E-mail Act” (gotta work on those acronyms, Mr….

As we alluded to last month, new forms of Internet communications beget new forms of spam, and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is no exception to the rule. Where it had already been predicted that VoIP spam, affectionaly referred to as “SPIT” (SPam over Internet Telephony) was just around the…

Some of you may recall that Aunty told you about Christopher Pierson, the British man who skulked about the tsunami disaster support boards, and wrote to those who were looking for loved ones feared lost in the disaster that, indeed, their loved ones had perished (sick b*st*ard. Oops…did Aunty say…

The Attorney General of Texas, and Microsoft, this week announced that the Texas Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against a Texas university student, Ryan Samuel Pitylak, and his California partner, Mark Stephen Trotter. Microsoft was one of a group of recipients of the spam, along with Texas anti-spam activist…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week has announced the first big bust of spammers under the so-called “plain brown wrapper” provisions of CAN-SPAM. The plain brown wrapper rules require that, in addition to the CAN-SPAM requirements for commercial email to which all commercial emailers are subject, email which is…

Poppa’s got a brand new bag, and spammers got a brand new ploy. This one, interestingly enough, is being attributed to spammers’ concerns over running afoul of CAN-SPAM, and so trying to end run it instead. Specifically, it is claimed, they are trying to avoid the stiff penalties which can…

Always remember that the word “fan” has its roots in the word “fanatic”. And this is exemplified by the behaviour of Allan Carlson, a Los Angeles resident who is an avid fan of Philadelphia’s baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies. Apparently Carlson had issues with the way that the Phillies’ management…

The good folks over at AuditMyPC.com have a very interesting idea. Spammers are of course known for harvesting email addresses from websites, and then using those email addresses to build email lists, which they then sell to other spammers. Odds are that spammers are crawling all over your website right…

Microsoft has won a $7.4million judgement against a Tuscon, Arizona spammer. Glenn Hannifin, the ‘proprietor’ of U Save Depot, was accused by Microsoft of sending millions of pieces of spam hawking everything from software to leather jackets. The software offered included copies of Microsoft Office, discounted to a fraction of…

The real Spam King is Sanford Wallace, who has been around in one form or another for well over a decade. It was Wallace’s CyberPromotions against which many a spam lawyer first cut their spam litigation teeth.