SEC Going After Spammers Now, Too
from the everyone-wants-a-piece-of-spammers dept
It seems that everyone wants a go at bringing down a spammer. While there have been a few cases of state officials going after spammers, at the federal level, it's been mostly limited to the FTC - and they only go after spammers for "misleading advertising claims" instead of the actual spamming. Well, now the SEC is getting into the act as well, and are going after a spammer who sent out (and profited from) misleading stock advice. The guy apparently set up a number of different businesses and aliases where he would set up websites touting a stock and also spamming "stock recommendations" out to his spam list. His defense, of course, is that there was a disclaimer at the bottom of each email. However, the SEC still says he was being misleading - since he claims the information he sent was based on his own review of the stocks, when (of course) the reality was that he just passed on the promotional info of whoever paid him to spam. Hopefully, this increased focus on bringing down spammers for whatever reason will make at least a few spammers think twice before continuing their activities. Unfortunately, that's unlikely, as spammers still seem to think that what they do is completely legal.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]