New York gets tough on spam

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is to sue a company which he says bombarded internet users with over 500 million junk emails.

Unsolicited email, or spam, arrives in millions of inboxes around the world, frustrating users, clogging servers and costing businesses time and money in deleting them.

Spitzer told Associated Press that, since March 2001, Niagara Falls-based MonsterHut.com had sent mass mailouts to millions of web users.

The spam went to users who did not want, and tried to block, the commercial offers, which resulted in around 750,000 complaints.

MonsterHut's website is no longer in operation, but Spitzer stressed that he wanted to use the state's deceptive practice and false advertising laws to extract fines from the company.

The US Senate recently voted in favour of nationwide statutes to prevent the sending of junk email that would see a maximum fine of $500,000 for convicted offenders.