[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
SL33spam2
[1][LINK]
[2]index [3]home [4]News [5]audio [6]search [7]help [8]techcity
computerworld
Spam attacks send angry firms to court
Stewart Deck and Matt Hamblen
08/18/97
Internet spam is no longer a joke to angry businesses. They
increasingly are fighting back with civil and criminal lawsuits and
offering rewards for information leading to arrests. In some cases,
users are even trying chargeback tactics.
Driving the get-tough attitude is mounting frustration over crippled
and lost business because of overloaded electronic-mail servers,
trademark infringement and the nefarious combination of return address
impersonation known as spoofing and blasts of spamming E-mail
advertisements. Faced in some instances with death threats,
exasperated and angry World Wide Web site administrators are trying
anything and everything including offering bounties for the names of
spammers and risking online vendettas in the process.
IMAGE AT STAKE
Particularly vulnerable to spamming which some observers call
``Internet terrorism'' is a company's image, which businesses spend
untold dollars building, maintaining and protecting.
One high-profile example is Samsung America, Inc.'s nightmare, which
began July 19 when a fake advertisement blasted across the Internet to
millions of electronic mailboxes. The angry replies caught Samsung by
surprise it hadn't sent out the advertisement.
Other messages bearing Samsung's return address have swamped
unsuspecting mailboxes since then, including a missive purportedly
from a Samsung attorney claiming ``fraudulent and actionable
transgressions'' on the recipient's part. Two of Samsung's Web-hosted
clients La Costa Resorts and Big Dog Sportswear also had suggestive
and misleading advertising messages sent out with their names
attached. They, in turn, have been inundated with complaints.
Samsung has been so hard hit getting 6,000 to 10,000 E-mail messages
per day and hundreds of telephone calls worldwide that the FBI is
looking into the matter. Samsung has spent millions of dollars on its
brand image and desperately wants the spamming to stop.
``We assume whoever is doing this buys lists of E-mail addresses from
someone,'' said Sang Cho, Samsung's in-house counsel, in an interview
with Computerworld. But the company doesn't know why or who holds the
grudge. It intends to file civil and criminal charges when the
perpetrator is unmasked.
Fake ads are the latest twist in spoofing and spamming. The Dr.
Seussian terms describe an underhanded sneak attack that tries to get
ads in front of as many unsuspecting eyeballs as possible by
impersonating a responsible sender. For example, Strong Capital
Management, Inc., a financial services company in Menomonee Falls,
Wis., is suing a spammer for allegedly stealing its address, thinking
that recipients would be more likely to open mail from a prestigious
firm than an ordinary Internet marketer. Such mail is hated by
recipients and is a bane of Internet service providers.
FIGHTING BACK
But now the impersonated legions are beginning to fight back. Although
there are no results in any of these cases yet, here is a sampling of
businesses going on the offensive with their beefs:
Two operators at SFF Net, a commercial online service used by science
fiction and fantasy writers, have filed suit in Kings County, N.Y.,
against Carlos Lattin for sending out spamming E-mails with their
forged return addresses. Their lawsuit claims trademark infringement,
unfair competition, defamation and false designation of origin. The
plaintiffs used New York laws to make the alleged impersonator's
Internet service provider divulge Lattins name.
A novice junk mailer was sued in May by an online floral information
service run by Tracy LaQuey Parker, an Internet author and education
market development manager at Cisco Systems, Inc. Parker opened the
site's electronic mailbox one morning in March and saw what Samsung,
La Costa and SFF Net have experienced: an avalanche of returned E-mail
and angry letters. ``I was shocked by the onslaught,'' Parker said.
Jon Tara, operator of San Diego's Live.Net site, has experienced the
same problem, but he hasn't been able to track down the spoofing
impersonator. He is offering a $100 reward for positive personal
identification of the spoofer. A message on the site from Tara to the
spamming perpetrator says, ``I am going to hound you to the ends of
the earth once I find out who you are. You will regret having used a
Live.Net return address. If you are lucky, I will never find out who
you are. If you are unlucky, I will. It will be the worst luck that
you've ever had.'' Tara has fought with a service provider who has
stopped shutting down spammers and wont provide Tara with identity
information, claiming privacy requirements. The provider has called
Taras bounty offer vigilantism.
In February, Matthew Seidl, a Colorado University computer science
student, filed a lawsuit against Greentree Mortgage and an unnamed
bulk E-mailer for allegedly sending out a batch of spam with Seidl's
``[email protected]'' address in the From and Return-Path headers.
Seidl said in an Internet posting that he decided to take ``whatever
legal actions we have to take to restore our good name and recover the
damages we suffered. We are doing our part to put an end to this type
of net abuse.''
UNLIMITED ACCESS
Such attacks are difficult to deal with, said Nina Burns, an analyst
at Creative Networks, Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif. ``Wackos have so much
access to information that it becomes scary for an individual,'' she
said. ``But until authentication and digital signature technology
become more widespread, I'm not sure what the answer is.''
``We need some sort of digital Caller ID,'' said Jonathan Wheat, an
analyst at the National Computer Security Association in Carlisle, Pa.
Until then, Wheat said, this may be the price we pay for
ever-increasing Internet connectivity.
_________________________________________________________________
See related stories:
* [9]Service providers won't release names
* [10]Internet providers fight back against spammers
[11]index [12]home [13]News [14]audio [15]search [16]help [17]techcity
computerworld
[18][LINK]
Copyright � 1997 @Computerworld. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part in any form or medium without express [19]written
permission of @Computerworld is prohibited. Computerworld and
@Computerworld and the respective logos are trademarks of
Computerworld, Inc.
References
1. http://ads01.focalink.com/SmartBanner/page/9.1.3.1-290
2. http://www.computerworld.com/home/toc.html
3. http://www.computerworld.com/index.html
4. http://www.computerworld.com/news/index.html
5. http://www.computerworld.com/realaudio/index.html
6. http://cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/search.nsf/FtFieldSearch?OpenForm
7. http://www.computerworld.com/help/index.html
8. http://www.computerworld.com/techcity/index.html
9. http://cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/print9497.nsf/31a3dd8c957f7b92852564b8006f7278/5f477c29d347b2ad852564f7004090df?OpenDocument
10. http://cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/print9497.nsf/31a3dd8c957f7b92852564b8006f7278/29bda244c62754ed852564f7004090f1?OpenDocument
11. http://www.computerworld.com/home/toc.html
12. http://www.computerworld.com/index.html
13. http://www.computerworld.com/news/index.html
14. http://www.computerworld.com/realaudio/index.html
15. http://cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/search.nsf/FtFieldSearch?OpenForm
16. http://www.computerworld.com/help/index.html
17. http://www.computerworld.com/techcity/index.html
18. http://ads01.focalink.com/SmartBanner/page/9.1.4.1-436
19. http://cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/print9497.nsf/All/home/copyright.html