• by July 21, 2004

Some news on the spam front.

New York's anti-spam attorney general Eliot Spitzer announced a settlement with Scott Richter and his company, OptInRealBig.com. Richter, known as the "spam king," will pay $50,000 in fines and abstain from using fraudulent headers and deceptive routing and domain practices. The settlement calls for Richter to provide the attorney general's office with customer data and purchase records and copies of his company's e-mail ads.

The case is a landmark and is sure to be used as an example for other state attorney generals going after spammers.

The suit, filed in December 2003, charged Richter and his clients with sending unsolicited e-mails including phony headers and subject lines. Richter got off easily some contend, as he had been facing a $20 million fine.

In addition, a federal judge in California awarded Microsoft $4 million after finding that David Khoshnood and Pointcom violated laws against used deceptive e-mail and Web addresses. Khoshnood and Pointcom can no longer use domain names such as "hottmail.com," "wwwwindows.com," and "microsoftc.com," among other Microsoft terms. The Seattle-based computer giant has initiated some 60 lawsuits against spammers in recent months and has achieved several legal victories.