The FTC has never gone after a person or company for providing misleading information just in a subject line, but the agency said that Brian D. Westby's e-mail headers were so egregious -- one claimed to be about "new movie info" -- that adults and children opened the e-mails and got solicitations for porn sites instead.
'What is wrong?'
The FTC said messages arriving with
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The suit against Mr. Westby, filed in the U.S. District Court of Illinois, seeks a temporary injunction to halt his junk, or "spam" e-mails promoting his "Married But Lonely" Web site and that he be forced to give up his profits from the e-mails.
Mr. Westby, of St. Louis, whose phone number is not published, could not be reached for comment. The FTC said it had received 46,000 copies of the e-mails from consumers complaining about the messages.
Real 'from' addresses
The complaint also accuses Mr. Westby of offering people the opportunity to "opt out" of further e-mails, but then not taking them off his lists. The FTC said another tactic used by Mr. Westby was "spoofing," or providing false "from" or "reply-to" e-mail addresses. The FTC claimed that in some cases real addresses were used, and people with those addresses received thousands -- and in one case, tens of thousands -- of angry returned e-mails.
The FTC action comes as the agency is readying a major workshop on spam at the end of the month.