Spammers hijack email newsletter lists

Spammers appear to be stealing email addresses from legitimate newsletter publishers and using them without permission it has emerged.

Email management company Lyris Technologies was in hot water over the issue, which could involve hundreds of thousands of compromised email addresses. MarketingSherpa.com, a publisher of online marketing newsletters, said it suspected that all eight of its mailing lists had been compromised. More than 20 other publishers, who combined have more than 2 million email addresses on their lists, have also complained about their Lyris-hosted email services.

In the US a new consumer group lobbying to outlaw unwanted spam email from marketing companies suffered a rocky website launch when it emerged that visitors were automatically being added to the group's own email list.

The Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC) said it never intended to send visitors unwanted emails and blamed the problem on its web designer.

TRAC, Consumer Action and the National Consumers League want the Federal Trade Commission to sue marketers who send spam without authentic return addresses or send e-mails to someone who has opted-out of receiving the messages.

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