The Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit last Thursday against UT junior Ryan Pitylak for allegedly sending illegal spam e-mails. Microsoft Corp. filed a separate lawsuit against Pitylak last Friday.
Pitylak and Mark Trotter, an associate from California, established PayPerAction L.L.C., Leadplex L.L.C. and Leadplex Inc. in 2002 and have allegedly sent hundreds of thousands of illegal, unsolicited commercial e-mails through the three companies, using over 250 assumed names, according to a statement from Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott. The defendants are ranked as the fourth largest spam operation in the world by Spamhaus, an international non-profit organization founded to combat spam.
"Spam is one of the most aggravating and pervasive problems facing consumers today," Abbott said. "Unwanted, unsolicited e-mail clogs computers of Texas consumers and Texas businesses, wasting precious time and money."
The federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, as summarized by the Federal Trade Commission, bans false or misleading information in the e-mail header or subject line. It requires that commercial e-mail contain a valid postal address for the sender and be identified as an advertisement.
Abbott's lawsuit alleged that the defendants sent unsolicited commercial e-mails promoting mortgage, debt counseling and warranty services, though the defendants are not licensed in Texas to perform such services. According to the complaint, the e-mails allegedly contained misleading information in the subject line in an attempt to trick consumers into opening messages they might otherwise delete.
"The defendants presented e-mails that alerted consumers that they may have some personal business that they need to take care of, which is clearly deceptive and against the law," said Tom Kelley, spokesman for Abbott. "They did not tag this as advertising."
The companies would claim to protect the consumers' privacy and then sell their personal information to a legitimate business for as much as $28 per individual, Kelley said.
Pitylak's attorney Lin Hughes said PayPerAction is a legal Internet marketing service. She also said Pitylak and Trotter sold their interest in the company to Hong Kong-based Eastmark Technology Limited in March of 2004. Eastmark is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.
"As long as commercial speech is not misleading, it is legal," Hughes said. "We believe that the companies are in complete compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act."
Pitylak was unavailable for comment.
Dewey Coffman, 43-year-old president of Austin-based Net-Sieve, a spam-filtering appliance, filed complaints against Pitylak with the Attorney General's office and participated in the investigation.
Spammers make millions of dollars, and the consumer ends up having to pay, Coffman said.
"Twenty-five percent of Internet Service Provider fees are because they're having to fight spam," Coffman said. "They have to provide extra administrative assistants, 24-hour tech support, filtering devices and more mail servers because of so much spam."
Steve Linford at Spamhaus said in an e-mail that 75 percent of all e-mail traffic in North America and Europe is spam, which is about 20 billion messages per day, costing the Internet community $28 billion per year, according to a 2004 United Nations estimate.
The University uses anti-spam software paid for by the students' ITS fee, said Daniel Updegrove, vice president of ITS.
"In one week in September, over 86 percent of the attempted inbound e-mails to UT ITS e-mail servers was determined to be spam," Updegrove said.
ITS advises recipients not to unsubscribe to spam e-mails, as some spammers are known to use that information to verify that the address is active, Updegrove said.
Coffman recommended that e-mail users never publish their addresses to avoid getting spam.
"If you do get spam, don't just delete it," Coffman said. "File a complaint. If everybody else would do that, it would stop."
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