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January 2007

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INOVA Technology (inovatechnology.com): A History of Spam

 INOVA Technlogy 15th January 2007

INOVA Technology (inovatechnology.com) is a California firm dealing in various aspects of IT security. It has a sleek web site, but a hidden past of spamming through its involvement with the Topsites Scam.

Note: this is a Santa Monica company and is not related to the Pennsylvanian or Malaysian company of a similar name, nor the company trading as 123barcode.com. It gives its contact details as follows:

    Head Office
    233 Wilshire Boulevard
    Suite 400,
    Santa Monica, CA, 90401

    Phone: (310) 857 6666
    Fax: (866) 467-7940

Formerly known as Edgetech Services, the company now known as INOVA Technology merged with the fraudulent Topsites operation in June 2005. Topsites is an operation headed by Edgetech director Paul Aunger, which has been sending out fraudulent "renewal" notices since at least February 2001. The Topsites fraud has been extensively documented here, and it continues to this day in a somewhat modified form.

Prior to 2005, Edgetech Services was a legitimate (but struggling) technology firm. However after June 2005 it became one of the world's biggest spammers, listed on the ROKSO database at Spamhaus. In January 2007, Edgetech Services divested itself of its spamming operations and renamed itself as "INOVA Technology".

During the period that Edgetech Services owned their spamming business (called "Web's Biggest"), the company was a prolific spammer using an operation in India to attempt to bypass US anti-spam laws. In an attempt to conceal the link between Edgetech and the spam, the work was contracted out to Somnath Bharti of Madgen Solutions who primarily used the domain www-goto.com to drive traffic to Edgetech's web properties (you can see the evidence of spamming here).

Although earlier spam messages from Topsites were clearly deceptive and in some cases were essentially attempting to blackmail non-payers, the email messages sent from June 2005 to December 2006 were differently phrased. However, the Topsites "business" is a continuous operation stretching back to 2001 and there is little doubt that Paul Aunger is the key person in this spam/scam outfit.

It's possible that not all the officers at Edgetech Services were aware of what Paul Aunger was up to, but you would assume that at some point they must have noticed that potential business partners were giving them a wide berth.

Edgetech Services disposed of the Topsites / Web's Biggest business to a firm called Advisors LLC which appears to be run by Paul Aunger.

It does appear that INOVA Technology wants to distance itself from its history of spam, but it is the same company as Edgetech Services, with pretty much the same set of officers. Anyone who wishes to do business with INOVA Technology would be advised to thoroughly research the company and its past (and present) links with the Topsites operation.

 

 Subj: Shopping and Services

 

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