FTC Wins Email Spam Case Against Self-Employed Porn Webmaster
On Tuesday, 23-year-old Brian D. Westby, a self-employed porn web master, agreed in federal court in Chicago to stop flooding consumers with e-mails containing innocuous subject lines. The messages tricked thousands of computer users into opening photos of nude women. A civil suit brought by the Federal Trade Commission accuses Westby of operating an Internet fraud scheme to lure people to his Web site with subject lines asking: "Did you hear the news?" or "Wanna hear a joke?" Some 46,000 people complained to the FTC about the spam. They said they had been tricked into opening sexually graphic messages. The FTC agreed that the case was far from over. "We will seek a permanent ban on the (deceptive e-mail) practices," said Steven Wernikoff, an attorney in the FTC's Chicago office. The FTC estimates that Westby has received some $1 million in fees from operation of his site. If the government can show that Westby got that sum through deceptive practices, Wernikoff said, "We will seek to recover that money." [Full story: Web site operator agrees to stop flood of misleading spam - Mercury News]
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