$250K Bounties For Spammers Considered

[jeffrey]

Members of Congress have backed a program encouraging "bounty hunters" to track down e-mail spammers.

However, the government should be prepared to spend freely if it decides to go ahead with the program, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.

Rewards of up to $250,000 will be needed to encourage people to turn over friends or associates who send out millions of deceptive e-mail pitches in violation of the law, the FTC said.

And that cash will have to come out of the federal budget, rather than settlements collected from spammers, the FTC said.

While millions of Internet users may be annoyed by spam, only a handful of insiders are likely to have enough information to form the basis of a case, the agency said... [read more at money.cnn.com]