Amazon pursues spoofing spammers
Amazon pursues spoofing spammers
Online retailer Amazon.com, one of the few big success stories of the dotcom era, has taken legal action against 11 Internet advertisers, who Amazon claim have been "spoofing" its email address to send spam to consumers.
Spoofing is a practice whereby spammers replace their own address with one of a popular, reputable organisation that would be more desirable to the recipient to open, as well as concealing the true identity of the sender.
The company has filed 11 lawsuits against various marketers alleged to be involved in what is a growing problem for companies operating online, particularly well-known operators such as Amazon.
One of the 11 accused, appliance retailer cyebye.com, has settled civil fraud charges with Amazon, agreeing to pay the e-tailer US$10,000 in damages.
In a statement, analyst group Gartner said the problem is getting ever more serious, prompting major companies such as Amazon to retaliate.
"Instead of getting easier, the problem of spam has grown more complex. Several enterprises have had their e-mail addresses publicly spoofed, including Bank of America, eBay, UPS and Wells Fargo. Like Amazon, some of them have started legal proceedings or investigations against spammers. Consumer giants feel they must fight back to combat customer fraud and because of the risk spamming poses to their brands. Microsoft announced a series of lawsuits against spammers in June 2003, and other ISPs have also gone after spammers in court."
The ease in which such spammers can move their operations, according to Gartner, makes it very difficult to capture such offenders.
"These investigations face numerous challenges, especially because spamming activity often happens in overseas jurisdictions where law enforcement is difficult to coordinate and where the countries do not recognise the judgments of foreign courts. Coordinating an international effort against spam has only just started, for example, with efforts by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Microsoft's lawsuits targeted offenders in North America and the United Kingdom simultaneously. That still leaves spammers wide areas of the world in which to operate. Many ISPs in developing economies haven't yet summoned the will to combat spam. Finally, international coordination is difficult even with crimes such as money laundering, whose urgency law enforcement in nearly all countries recognises."
"Spoofing is a problem faced by any company with a trusted domain name that uses e-mail to communicate with its customers," said David Zapolsky, Amazon's associate general counsel.
"It's not just spam; it's consumer fraud, and the actions taken today by Amazon will send a strong message to anyone engaged in this conduct that it will not be tolerated."
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