Finally, some exceptional good news;
E-Mail Enhancement
Melinda Peer, 10.14.08, 6:00 PM ET
Finally: permanent deletion for certain inbox-cluttering promises of male enhancement and slim-down products that e-mail filters have seemed impotent against.
At the request of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, a U.S. district court pulled the plug on a sweeping spam network deemed the world's largest. It had generated 3 million complaints from e-mail users.
The defendants in the case include an Australia-based New Zealander named Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith of Texas, and four companies they control: ClickFusion, Inet Ventures, Tango Pay and TwoBucks Trading.
According to court filings, defendants deceptively advertised male-enhancement pills, prescription drugs and weight-loss pills, hooking clients by falsely claiming that certain pharmaceuticals were approved by the Food and Drug Administration and that certain products were completely herbal, safe and capable of producing significant results.
Defendants recruited global spammers to flood inboxes with promotions for bogus products that directed customers to the defendants' websites. They also misled consumers by promising certain security encryption measures for credit-card transactions made through online pharmacies. According to Federal Trade Commission investigators, however, the sites lacked the security features they promised.
According to the Federal Trade Commission's allegations, both Atkinson and Smith are liable for spamming. The FTC named Atkinson as responsible for product claims while Smith was named as liable for claims made on pharmaceutical products.
The Federal Trade Commission filed its complaint with an Illinois district court on Oct. 6 and said its Midwest region in Chicago is handling the case.
