Spammed man sued by alleged spammer wants cash

A man who claims he has been receiving unsolicited emails from a US company for two years is now being sued by them, for branding them spammers and reporting their actions to ISPs.

Jay Stuler is now on the receiving end of a lawsuit from New Hampshire firm Atriks, which alleges Stuler caused financial harm to the firm and caused it to lose contracts. The suit also states that Stuler had been making defamatory statements, including calling CEO Brian Haberstroh a "criminal" and the company "a notorious spam gang", which the suit denies.

Stuler, however, says on his website the case is a "frivolous lawsuit designed to harass and intimidate" and claims the reason he's been sued by Atriks is because, after complaining to his ISP about the alleged spam, the company saw its accounts closed down by the service providers.

"They apparently are angry that spamming has become difficult for them and blame me," he said. "If I can be sued simply for complaining about spammers, then anyone can be."

In the court filing, Atriks states that: "The activities of Atriks, in providing internet hosting, and DMC, [a company registered at the same address as Atriks] in sending commercial email, meet the requirements of the CAN-spam Act."

Anti-spam foundation SpamHaus has listed Atriks on its register of known spam operations (ROKSO), which states the company has violated the act by using misleading subject lines.

SpamHaus also says it has had complaints that software is being installed by Atriks on users' computers without their permission - which is a felony.

"Spamhaus has received numerous reports of the VirtualMDA software discovered running on people's computers without their permission, they have no idea what it's doing or how it got installed there, and they are certainly not getting paid for the use of their computer [as Atriks/Sendmail claims to do]," the ROKSO says.

Stuler is appealing for help from the public in fighting the suit and has set up a PayPal account to pay for his legal fees and is asking for donations.

"If and when my legal bills are paid in full, any donations received will be passed on to others being harassed by frivolous lawsuits from spammers," he adds.