Amazon.com filed federal lawsuits in the United States and Canada seeking to restrain 11 online marketers from sending email forgeries falsely labeled as coming from Amazon.com. As a deterrent to others, the suits also seek millions of dollars in punitive damages.
Simultaneously, the New York Attorney General's office announced a settlement of civil fraud charges with one of the email forgers identified by Amazon.com. The agreement followed an investigation conducted with Amazon.com's cooperation. The settlement agreement prohibits Cyebye.com from using third parties' names to market, unless the company obtains authority to do so. The company is also required to keep records of all commercial emails during the next two years and provide the Attorney General's office with regular updates of its compliance with the settlement. Cyebye.com must pay $10,000 in penalties to the State of New York.
The Amazon.com lawsuits are part of a broader company initiative to crack down on and eliminate email forgeries, also known as "spoofing," that affect the company. Spoofing is an illegal, deceptive online marketing ploy that conceals the true identity of an email sender and instead falsely identifies someone else as the sender. Amazon has set up a special email account, stop-spoofing@amazon.com, for consumers to report suspected spoofing involving Amazon.com.
Amazon has also begun working with several ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to explore and promote technical solutions that would make it more difficult to deliver a spoofed e-mail message to unsuspecting consumers.
