The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down four illegal e-mail spamming operations, including one that offered the opportunity to "date lonely wives," the agency said Thursday.

Two of the other operations sending unwanted commercial e-mail hijacked the computers of third parties and used them to spam customers with sexually explicit e-mail, the FTC said Thursday.

The FTC charged the four operations with violating the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act. Federal courts in Illinois and Arizona approved the FTC request to shut down the operations.

Cleverlink Trading Ltd. and its partners will give up $400,000 in spam-related gains to settle FTC charges that e-mail from them or their affiliates violated federal law. The FTC sued the group, saying their "date lonely wives" spam violated nearly every provision of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Cleverlink's e-mail contained misleading headers and deceptive subject lines, it did not contain a link to allow consumers to opt out of receiving future spam, did not contain a valid physical postal address and did not contain the disclosure that it was sexually explicit, the FTC said.

It also included sexual materials in the initially viewable area of the e-mail, in violation of the FTC’s adult labeling rule. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division halted the operation and froze the defendants' assets. The court approved a settlement with Cleverlink and four other defendants in July.

In a second case, the FTC charged that Zachary Kinion sent spam hawking adult sites, mortgage rates and privacy software and paid other spammers commissions to send spam messages for him. Kinion hid his true originating address by routing his spam through the computers of innocent third parties, the FTC said.   

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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