A company reported to an ISP for sending bulk spam is replying by suing the individual who made the allegation.
The sued party, Jay Stuler, reported New Hampshire-based Atriks, otherwise known as Distributed Mail, to his ISP after receiving unsolicited bulk e-mail over a period from April 2003 onward. According to court papers, Atriks then lost its account with its ISPs, Lightship Telecom, Spectra Access, and North Atlantic Internet, resulting in the legal action against Stuler.
The writ issued by the company denies the allegations, stating that it was not in breach of the U.S. antispam CAN-SPAM Act and that the complaint caused lost business due to the ending of the ISP contracts. In its legal submission the company claims: "Atriks does not originate or send commercial e-mail to third parties, and does not otherwise conduct activities regulated by the CAN-SPAM Act."
There is nothing about the company's slick Web site that would give clues as to why it would send spam. The company's self-description, as displayed on its Web site, reads: "[We] have been working in computer information systems (CIS) since 1969 and with Internet technologies since 1992. With more than 330 servers in our data center and a relational database of over one billion individual records, we currently manage the business and consumer data needs of many Fortune 1000 companies across the U.S., as well as the comprehensive data requirements of the U.S. homeland security effort."
A Different Story
However, independent antispam group Spamhaus lists numerous abuses that the company has been accused of, including using techniques to get around ISP-level spam filtering, installing software on people's PCs without permission, and sending e-mail with misleading subject lines. 'Get 100 to 500 dollars fast', 'About your Internet connection problems', 'Someone wants to date you', and 'Your cash has arrived' are a few of the examples the group claims to have encountered.
The entry on Atriks can be found on the Spamhaus Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO).
Spamhaus further states that Atriks could be in breach of U.S. law. "The VirtualMDA system appears to violate the recent CAN-SPAM law by falsifying the transmission path, i.e., there is no trace of the original Atriks/Sendmails server (where the e-mail originates) showing in the headers, only the IP address of the victim running their software."
Stuler has declined to comment on the case on the advice of his attorney, but makes clear his feelings on a Web page he has set up to cover its proceedings. "I believe this is a frivolous lawsuit designed to harass and intimidate. If I can be sued simply for complaining about spammers, then anyone can be."
