The Federal Trade Commission is working with law enforcers in
the US and Canada to crackdown on deceptive spam and internet
fraud. Together, the agencies have brought 63 actions against
web-based scams ranging from auction fraud to bogus cancer cure
sites, and have sent more than 500 warning letters to other
spammers.
"Illegal internet schemes and deceptive spam don't stop at state
lines or international borders," said J. Howard Beales III,
Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "The FTC and
its law enforcement partners are sending a signal to scammers:
We're out there surfing the net, reading our spam and working
together to stop internet scams."
The FTC maintains a database to which consumers are invited to
forward their unwanted spam. Consumers currently send spam to the
agency at a rate of approximately 15,000 e-mails each day using the
agency's database address, uce@ftc.gov.
The agencies also tested whether "unsubscribe" or “remove me”
options in spam were being honoured. From e-mail forwarded to the
FTC's database, the agencies culled more than 200 e-mails that
purported to allow recipients to remove their name from a spam
list.
The agencies set up dummy e-mail accounts to test the pledges,
but discovered that the vast majority of addresses to which they
sent the requests were invalid. The FTC has sent more than 75
letters warning spammers that deceptive "removal" claims in
unsolicited e-mail are illegal.
