Earthlink Not To Blame For Incorrectly Fingering Legit Bank As A Phishing Site

from the follow-the-details dept

You have to read through the details carefully to understand exactly what happened in this case, but a judge has thrown out a lawsuit against Earthlink from a legitimate bank who claimed that Earthlink told its users the bank's website was a phishing site. The reason the case was thrown out was simply because Earthlink licensed the database from a third party, and therefore wasn't liable for its content. If I read that correctly, it would suggest the bank could still go after the company Earthlink licensed the data from. A quick search says that Earthlink got that data from Cyota, which (luckily for Earthlink) isn't Aluria -- the company Earthlink just acquired, or suddenly the lawsuit might be right back in Earthlink's lap. Still, like the question of whether or not it's legal to declare certain emails spam, should it be illegal to have a false positive on an anti-phishing tool?
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 22 Sep 2005 @ 7:59am

    No Subject Given

    The Earthlink toolbar also uses data from eBay/PayPal, Digital Envoy, and Quova.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Just Me, 22 Sep 2005 @ 9:18am

    Errors

    No. it is up to each person if they want to have someone else do the research and apply labels to things, be it spam or phishing.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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