4 Net providers join to go after spammers
Four major Internet service providers said Wednesday that they have filed a series of lawsuits meant to shut down a number of leading senders of unsolicited junk e-mail, or spam.
The suits, which are seeking monetary damages and injunctions against further mass e-mail messages, are among the first to invoke the new federal anti-spam law, which went into effect Jan. 1.
So far, the law has not done anything to stem the torrent of spam. In February, 62 percent of all e-mail was spam, according to Brightmail, an e- mail filter company in San Francisco. That is up from 58 percent in December.
The four companies -- America Online, Earthlink, Yahoo and Microsoft --
filed lawsuits in federal courts in their home states.
AOL sued Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a former leader of a neo-Nazi organization who turned to selling penis enlargement pills. Microsoft sued JDO Media, of Ocala, Fla., which runs a multi-level marketing scheme in which each member recruits new members by e-mail. And Sunnyvale's Yahoo sued Golddisk.net of Kitchener, Ont., which has sent nearly 94 million e-mail messages to Yahoo users so far this year offering mortgage insurance and travel services.
