Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Minipost: Google v. Pacific WebWorks

I blogged recently about the "Google Jobs" scammers who were abusing Twitter, Blogspot, Google Reader, and spaces.live.com by creating new accounts in all those places and then spamming those URLs. They then second-phase scammed by claiming that you were entering a "$1.95 trial", which actually could cost more than $200 and had no way to exit, since no one ever answers the phone number you have to call to "cancel your trial". (see Google Jobs Scam: Read the Fine Print

Several sources are reporting that Google has now filed suit against the parent company of this scam, Pacific WebWorks. I first heard about it from Graham Cluley's Sophos Blog, but went on to find Google's report.

Here's Google's actual report on it:

GoogleBlog: Fighting Fraud Online Taking Google Money Scammers to Court

And the Lawsuit filing (26 page PDF)

The case is very similar to the Google Money Tree lawsuit brought by the FTC against Infusion Media and West Coast Internet Media:

FTC v. Infusion Media and West Coast Media (17 page PDF)

Go Google! Take these Spammers and Scammers off the Internet!

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Trying a new setting. After turning on comments, I got about 20-30 comments per day that were all link spam. Sorry to require login, but the spam was too much.