Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

The Federal Trade Commission is working with law enforcers in the US and Canada to crackdown on deceptive spam and internet fraud. Together, the agencies have brought 63 actions against web-based scams ranging from auction fraud to bogus cancer cure sites, and have sent more than 500 warning letters to other spammers.

"Illegal internet schemes and deceptive spam don't stop at state lines or international borders," said J. Howard Beales III, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "The FTC and its law enforcement partners are sending a signal to scammers: We're out there surfing the net, reading our spam and working together to stop internet scams."

The FTC maintains a database to which consumers are invited to forward their unwanted spam. Consumers currently send spam to the agency at a rate of approximately 15,000 e-mails each day using the agency's database address, [email protected].

The agencies also tested whether "unsubscribe" or “remove me” options in spam were being honoured. From e-mail forwarded to the FTC's database, the agencies culled more than 200 e-mails that purported to allow recipients to remove their name from a spam list.

The agencies set up dummy e-mail accounts to test the pledges, but discovered that the vast majority of addresses to which they sent the requests were invalid. The FTC has sent more than 75 letters warning spammers that deceptive "removal" claims in unsolicited e-mail are illegal.

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