Largest U.S. Fine Ever Levied for Spam Violations

Ouch! Oh, this has just got to hurt. Nothing says ‘busted’ like being told to pay a huge fine for spamming people with junk ads. Hmm, perhaps there is something to this U.S. CAN-SPAM Act after all?

An Internet marketer will pay a $900,000 fine, the largest ever on spam-related charges, in a consent decree announced today by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Jumpstart Technologies, based in San Francisco, is permanently prohibited from unlawful practices related to the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act as part of the decree, entered in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The company, operating as an Internet marketer since July 2002, provided direct marketing opportunities for advertising partners and collected marketing data to sell to third parties, the FTC said. Jumpstart, in its FreeFlixTix promotion, violated the antispam law by disguising its commercial e-mail messages as personal messages and by misleading consumers about the terms and conditions of the promotion, the FTC said.

Jumpstart offered free movie tickets to consumers in exchange for the names and e-mail addresses of five or more of their friends, the FTC said. Jumpstart then sent the friends commercial e-mail with the original consumer’s e-mail address in the From line and a seemingly personal subject line such as “Hey,” “Happy Valentine’s Day,” “Happy New Year,” or “Movie time. Let’s go.” Source: PCWorld

[tags]u.s. district court,spam violations,jumpstart technologies,commercial e-mail[/tags]