A Weblog About Topics and Issues Discussed in the Book Spam Kings by Brian McWilliams

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March 8, 2005

"Diploma mill" sued for spamming

diplomaA small California ISP has sued Kennedy-Western University (KWU) for violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act as well as California's Business and Professions Code.

In a December 2004 complaint filed in a federal court, Hypertouch, Inc. claims that KWU (and affiliates working on its behalf) sent spam advertising online courses. Hypertouch claims the messages had forged routing headers and were sent to email addresses harvested from the Internet, in violation of federal and state law.

Attorneys for Wyoming-based KWU have denied those allegations. KWU also said that Hypertouch doesn't fit the definition of an ISP under CAN-SPAM and therefore doesn't have grounds to sue. Although KWU is a non-accredited institution, attorneys rejected Hypertouch's description of it as a "diploma mill."

Newsgroups contain plenty of reports of spam for KWU's programs.

Hypertouch has assembled a collection of the KWU lawsuit documents here.

In March of 2004, Hypertouch filed one of the first CAN-SPAM lawsuits against BobVila.com. A trial in that case is scheduled for later this month.

Posted by brian at March 8, 2005 10:22 AM

 

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