On Friday, authorities announced that San Francisco-based Jumpstart Technologies, a firm accused of offering free tickets to movies in exchange for e-mail addresses, has agreed to pay $900,000 to settle a lawsuit filed against it for alleged antispam regulation violations, the Associated Press reports via MSNBC.com.The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Jumpstart with violations of the 2003 CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act by deceptively cloaking commercial e-mail to appear as personal messages and misleading people regarding its FreeFlixTix program, the AP reports.“This was a pretty cut-and-dry case of deception,” Lisa Rosenthal, an FTC staff attorney, told the AP. “The law enables consumers to block commercial e-mails if they want to, and this was subverting consumers’ ability to do that because it looked like it was coming from friends.”Jumpstart allegedly offered free movie tickets to people willing to provide at least five e-mail addresses of friends, and then sent numerous messages to those addresses disguised as personal messages so they wouldn’t be weeded out by a spam filter, the AP reports. A number of people who responded to those e-mails were then asked to submit credit card data to a business partner, and some had to pay a fee to cancel the offer, according to the AP.Filed in San Francisco federal court last Wednesday, March 22, the civil settlement says Jumpstart must avoid any additional anti-spam law violations, though it doesn’t contain an admission of guilt on Jumpstart’s behalf, according to the AP. For related coverage, read Co. to Settle Spam Case for $1.1M.Check out our CSO Security Feed page for updated news coverage. Related content news analysis Companies are already feeling the pressure from upcoming US SEC cyber rules New Securities and Exchange Commission cyber incident reporting rules don't kick in until December, but experts say they highlight the need for greater collaboration between CISOs and the C-suite By Cynthia Brumfield Sep 28, 2023 6 mins Regulation Data Breach Financial Services Industry news UK data regulator warns that data breaches put abuse victims’ lives at risk The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has reprimanded seven organizations in the past 14 months for data breaches affecting victims of domestic abuse. By Michael Hill Sep 28, 2023 3 mins Electronic Health Records Data Breach Government news EchoMark releases watermarking solution to secure private communications, detect insider threats Enterprise-grade software embeds AI-driven, forensic watermarking in emails and documents to pinpoint potential insider risks By Michael Hill Sep 28, 2023 4 mins Communications Security Threat and Vulnerability Management Security Software news SpecterOps to use in-house approximation to test for global attack variations The new offering uses atomic tests and in-house approximation in purple team assessment to test all known techniques of an attack. By Shweta Sharma Sep 28, 2023 3 mins Penetration Testing Network Security Security Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe