Unspam Technologies, the company that tries to combat spam together with governments, companies and internet users, has filed a lawsuit in the United States against unknown email address collectors.
Unspam Technologies is also responsible for Project Honey Pot. Thanks to this project, terabytes of information have now been collected about IP addresses from which spam has been sent, but also IP addresses of the so-called harvesters. It is precisely this latter group that will be tackled in this lawsuit. Harvesters operate on a smaller scale than the big spam senders; harvesters collect email addresses and resell them to the spammers. It is striking that Project Honey Pot has been able to trace many IP addresses of these collectors, often working individually, because they make much less effort to hide their IP addresses. Unspam Technologies expects great success with this plan of action, as the harvesters are easier to catch and will eventually lead to the spammers to whom they sell their lists.
What is striking about this lawsuit is the large group of prosecutors. Normally, an Internet provider takes spammers to court and such cases are also regularly seen as a publicity stunt by the provider. Unspam Technologies represents several internet providers but also more than twenty thousand internet users who are sick of spam. Project Honey Pot employees don’t expect miracles, but at least hope to get some big spammers offline and already see it as a big victory in the ever-lingering spam war.