Bounties For Spammers Win  Limited FTC Backing
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The FTC gave limited endorsement to the notion of cash rewards for people who help track down e-mail spammers, but suggested that the measure might work in fewer circumstances than had been pushed by some anti-spam activists. -The Washington Post
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down four illegal e-mail spamming operations, including one that offered the opportunity to "date lonely wives," the agency said Thursday.
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Organizations and law enforcement agencies fighting spyware are making progress, but new tools in an antispyware bill stalled in the U.S. Congress could improve the efforts, a member of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday.One of the spyware bills passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, the Spy Act, would give the FTC authority to impose civil fines on companies that distribute spyware to consumers&#39; computers. The bill, along with the Internet Spyware Prevention (or I-SPY) Act, have&#160;stalled in the Senate&#160;since passing the House in May and June.The FTC has the authority to collect profits from spyware operations and collect money for consumer redress, but it lacks the authority to impose other fines, as it does when going after spammers, said Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, speaking at a spyware forum in Washington, D.C.Assigning a dollar figure to consumer harm is tricky in many spyware cases, especially when the spyware delivers pop-up advertisements to computers, Leibowitz said. It&#39;s sometimes difficult to get courts to assign large consumer damages to pop-up cases, he said.In some cases, spyware damages are assessed by judges &quot;who don&#39;t even use computers,&quot; said Dave Koehler, with the FTC&#39;s Bureau of Consumer Protection.The Spy Act would allow the FTC to fine spyware vendors up to $3 million for hijacking computers, delivering unwanted adware, and other violations, and $1 million for collecting personal data without permission, in addition to going after the vendor&#39;s profits and seeking consumer redress.Additional authority to impose civil fines would give the FTC &quot;an enormous deterrent,&quot; Leibowitz said.&quot;Right now, companies know that the worst they can do is lose their profits,&quot; he added. &quot;They&#39;re not going to get fined on top of that.&quot;The FTC has brought several spyware actions against companies. In February, the agency settled&#160;a case against adware distributor DirectRevenue. In that case, DirectRevenue settled for $1.5 million, based on its profits, but the founders of the company had received more than $20 million in venture-capital funding, Leibowitz said.While participants in the spyware forum said there continue to be many challenges, including a growing trend of foreign spyware vendors, the cost of spyware to U.S. consumers seems to be falling. Consumer Reports estimated that spyware cost U.S. consumers $2.6 billion in 2006, but only $1.7 billion in 2007, noted Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a supporter of StopBadware.org, a consumer-protection effort aimed at spyware and other malicious code.The drop in the cost of spyware can be attributed to a number of factors, Schwartz said. Antispyware technology is getting better, the FTC has taken action against spyware vendors, and StopBadware.org has distributed a&#160;list of malicious Web sites, he said. In addition, some states have taken action against spyware, and cybersecurity groups&#39; public education programs seem to be working, he said.But Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), noted that consumers may know more about spyware, but they aren&#39;t always acting on their knowledge. A survey released by the NCSA and McAfee earlier this month found 78 percent of respondents&#39; computers didn&#39;t have all three of what the NCSA calls the &quot;core protection&quot; software: anti-virus, antispyware, and firewall.&quot;We&#39;re not seeing a huge increase in the actual behavior change,&quot; he said.
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Jail looms A notorious American spammer is heading for jail after a Virginia Appeals Court upheld his conviction and sentence to nine years' imprisonment for junk mail offences.â¦
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Analysts say a new twist on the war against spammers in Europe isn&#39;t likely to spill across Unites States borders, but is rather an opening salvo more likely to fizzle than to explode.
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FTC says tracking them down won&#39;t be cheap; rewards of up to $250,000 needed, commission says. WASHINGTON  - Members of Congress have backed a program encouraging &quot;bounty hunters&quot; to track down e-mail spammers.
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THE US Federal Trade Commission said that it had released a report which assessed whether offering bounties to turn in spammers would help stem the flood.
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X marks the pest A Dutch spammer who used compromised PCs to spamvertise web sites has been fined â¬75,000 ($97,000) by Opta, the Netherlands telecoms regulatorâ¦
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With phishing attacks skyrocketing, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a consumer alert detailing ways Web surfers can avoid being fleeced by online scammers.
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FTC says $100,000-250,000 bounty would provide incentive for citizens to identify perpetrators of in-box overload.
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Services try different approaches to sender authentication to halt spam.
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Anti-spam activists disagree about whether a $1.08 billion judgment Friday against three spammers in Iowa will discourage others from sending unsolicited bulk e-mail.
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The Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcers face three hurdles in having a reward system for anti-spam investigations, according to a new FTC report.
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Claiming a victory against X-rated spam, the Federal Trade Commission late Tuesday won an order to shut down illegal Internet advertising for six companies accused of profiting from sexually explicit e-mail.
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Antispam activists disagree about the effect of the major federal court judgment against three spammers.
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The Dutch telecom and postal watchdog OPTA has levied fines as high as 42,500 euros ($57,540) against several individuals and small companies for sending out spam messages.