In high school, the Head brothers of Kitchener, Ont. called themselves the Canadian Jack Asses. Yahoo. Inc. is calling themselves something else: The world's worst spammers.
Eric and Matthew Head and their father Barry were named yesterday by Yahoo as defendants in a series of lawsuits filed by the world's biggest e-mail service providers. Paul Waldie and I have a story on this in today's Globe and Mail:
Four major e-mail providers have launched a legal attack on what they say are the world's worst spammers, including a Canadian father and his two sons.
Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online and Earthlink filed a series of lawsuits in the United States yesterday in a bid to crack down on unsolicited e-mails, or spam.
The companies claim that last year, Internet users received more than two trillion unwanted e-mails, accounting for about half of all e-mail traffic. They also say spam costs North American businesses $10-billion (U.S.) annually in lost productivity, network upgrades and unrecoverable data.
If you'd like more information, there is a press release here. You can also view the statements of claim filed by the various companies.