Comcast Claims Linhardt Sued to Beat Spam Filters

Comcast has countersued David Linhardt, president of e-mail marketing firm e360 Insight, and the accusations have begun to fly.

In a complaint filed last week, Comcast accused Linhardt and various business entities associated with him of sending spam to Comcast subscribers, using misleading or false headers and subject lines, selling counterfeit goods, falsely advertising the goods as free, and fabricating opt-in records.

The suit is in response to a complaint Linhardt filed in January accusing Comcast of repeatedly blocking e360’s e-mail from reaching recipients who had opted to receive messages.

The most eye-popping accusation in Comcast’s complaint— filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois—is that Linhardt is suing Comcast to learn how he can circumvent the cable provider’s spam filters.

“E360 is pursuing this meritless legal attack for the improper purposes of: a) learning how to circumvent the lawful Comcast filtering system; [and] b) obtaining discovery, the purpose of which is to undermine the viability of filtering systems used by ISPs,” the complaint said.

The complaint also said that after e360 sued Comcast, the cable provider offered to work with e360 to figure out why its messages were getting blocked, but e360 refused the offer saying it would learn how to circumvent Comcast’s spam filtering system through the discovery process.

Internet service providers all have their own unique combination of techniques and technologies for keeping spam from reaching subscribers, and consider much of the information surrounding their spam filters top secret.

Comcast is America’s No. 2 Internet access provider with 12.9 million subscribers and a 13.1% marketshare, according to ISP Planet.

Linhardt denied Comcast’s allegations. “We are not trying to circumvent their filters,” he said in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter. “We filed the lawsuit because Comcast's filters are blocking our order-confirmation and double-confirmed messages. We believe these blocks are improper for reasons stated in our complaint.”

Linhardt has also repeatedly denied ever sending unsolicited e-mail.

Meanwhile, the Comcast complaint also accuses Linhardt of laundering spam for other marketers that would otherwise be blocked.

After getting a federal injunction against Spamhaus barring the anti-spam firm from blacklisting e360’s IP addresses or that of any of its affiliates, Linhardt launched a business called IP Protection Services.

“The IP Protection Service entails modifying the third-party marketers’ IP addresses to appear as if they are e360’s IP addresses, or providing the third-party Internet marketers access to e360’s servers for use in sending mass e-mail marketing messages through e360’s servers that have been de-listed with Spamhaus pursuant to the court order,” said Comcast’s complaint.

Spamhaus maintains a list of entities its volunteers deem to be spammers that an unknown number of ISPs check incoming e-mail against. A listing on Spamhaus will cause the mailer serious delivery troubles.

In June, Linhardt struck a deal with Virtumundo and then demanded that Spamhaus delist the e-mail marketer from its blacklist because it now met the definition of affiliate under the court order, according to Comcast. Spamhaus refused to lift the block, according to its executive director Steve Linford.

“We told Linhardt’s lawyer we were not going to remove any ‘e360 customer’ and to take it up with the Illinois judge if he didn’t like that," wrote Linford in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter. “We were hoping he would run back to his judge as we had a tape recording of e360 selling a ‘rent-a-judgement’ service to other spammers in which e360 would falsify ARIN records to get the judge to order Spamhaus to remove IPs of other spammers.”

Besides accusing Linhardt of using the court’s discovery process to find a way to circumvent its spam filters, Comcast also accused Linhardt of lying to its employees over the phone and in a letter when he claimed all of the intended recipients of e360’s e-mail had opted in to receive the messages.

The complaint asks for an injunction barring Linhardt and his affiliates from sending unsolicited e-mail to Comcast subscribers and circumventing its spam filters.

The complaint also asks the court to bar Linhardt and his affiliates from sending any e-mail to Comcast subscribers until they have certified they comply with best practices set forth by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, or MAAWG, an organization of ISP representatives dedicated to fighting spam.

Comcast is also asking for statutory, compensatory, and aggravated damages, disgorgement of profits made from e-mailing its subscribers, and attorneys fees and court costs.

Linhardt is engaged in multiple court battles over his e-mail marketing business. He is suing members of the Nanae anti-spam discussion group. He is also being sued in separate actions by a lawyer in Ohio and an anti-spammer in California.