Billion dollar spam suit filed

Stephen Withers
Friday, 27 April 2007 05:14

Business IT - Security

Anti-spam campaign Project Honey Pot has filed a law suit seeking more than $US1 billion in statutory damages from spammers.

Project Honey Pot's members have installed software on their web servers that identifies the IP addresses used to harvest email addresses, and the strategy is to use the legal process to force the harvesters to reveal the identities of spammers who purchased address lists from them.

The case has been brought against "John Does Injuring [Project Honey Pot] and its Members By Harvesting Email Addresses, Transmitting Spam, And Posting Comment Spam" on behalf of tens of thousands of project members in more than 100 countries.

"If you've harvested email addresses or sent spam in the last two years, chances are you're on our radar screen and we're coming after you," the project warns.

Project Honey Pot's lawyer is Jon Praed of the Internet Law Group, which has won precedent-setting legal victories in spam-related cases. "In the world of anti-spam lawyers, Jon is the best of the best," the project's web site  claims.

Project Honey Pot is backed by Unspam Technologies, a provider of do-not-contact registries and compliance tools.