April 30, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- According to reports released late last week, a Utah-based anti-spam group called Project Honey Pot (projecthoneypot.org) has filed suit in the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking damages for email harvesting and spam on behalf of its project members.
Level 1 PCI DSS Certified Service Provider! DataPipe delivers the best network & support; top tier data centers; New York metro, Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai. DataPipe - Personal Touch, Global Reach.
The lawsuit reportedly marks the first time the CAN-SPAM Act has been used to single out the practice of email harvesting, in which algorithms are used to crawl the internet looking for email addresses to target with spam.
The lawsuit was filed against the universe of John Doe defendants represented by the more than 2.5 million IP addresses captured by Project Honey Pot over the past two years, and could represent more than $1 billion in statutory damages under CAN-SPAM and Virginia's anti-spam laws.
Project Honey Pot says it has identified more than 15,000 email harvesters and 668 comment spammers that target forums and blogs. The project has thousands of members contributing from around the world.
The organization is represented in the lawsuit by Jon Praed of the Internet Law Group, a company responsible for several well-known anti-spam prosecutions.
