Fergie's Tech Blog

FTC, California Attorney General Halt Illegal Spam Operation

The Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General of California have brought a permanent halt to an operation that sent millions of spam messages that violated federal and state laws. The settlement will bar future violations of the spam laws, will require the operators to monitor affiliates closely to assure that they are not violating state and federal laws, and requires that they give up approximately $475,000 in ill-gotten gains.

In April 2005, the FTC and the Attorney General of California charged that the defendants used third-party affiliates or “button pushers” to send spam hawking mortgage loans and other products and services. The operation used hyperlinks in the spam to refer consumers to Web sites operated by the defendants. Consumers forwarded more than 1.8 million of the defendants' e-mail messages to the FTC. Those messages demonstrated that the defendants were violating almost every provision of the CAN-SPAM Act, the law enforcers said.

posted by Fergie @ 4/06/2006 03:25:00 PM