A company found to be bombarding users of Japan’s popular i-mode mobile internet service with unsolicited commercial e-mail has been halted by NTT DoCoMo, the company behind the service and the country’s leading mobile operator.

The opportunity to abuse the e-mail system and bombard users with unsolicited e-mail was presented by an oversight by DoCoMo itself. On its launch, DoCoMo created users’ e-mail addresses by randomly generating simple 11 numeric combinations based on users’ telephone numbers. This made it easy for software to “guess” and target the addresses.

DoCoMo has been successful in obtaining an injunction against the company sending the spam, Global Networks, and, said DoCoMo’s chief legal advisor, “hopes that the legal steps [that have been] taken will send a strong signal for other companies to refrain from sending mass e-mail.”

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