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April 18, 2005

Lawsuit over coffee spam

Did Gevalia sell its opt-out list to spammers?

That's the allegation in an $11M lawsuit filed today against the coffee company, which is a unit of the Kraft food giant.

California ISP Hypertouch sued Gevalia under the CAN-SPAM act. President and founder Joe Wagner claims he submitted a new, unused email address to Gevalia's opt-out page, and soon began receiving spam at the new account.

Others have recently reported similar results with the opt-out page.

Gevalia has been publicly criticized for years over its use of spamming affiliates.

My hunch is that Gevalia distributed the "remove list" to its spamming affiliates, with instructions to scrub the addresses from their mailing lists. But some of the affiliates apparently turned around and treated it like an opt-in list.

In any case, Gevalia's in a lot of hot water (replace with your favorite coffee pun).

Last December, Hypertouch sued an alleged diploma mill for spamming.

Posted by brian at April 18, 2005 4:26 PM