Anne Mitchell is out as CEO of the Palo Alto, CA, anti-spam company she founded, Habeas Inc., according to a well-placed source.
Details of Mitchell's situation were sketchy yesterday, and she declined comment. It is unknown who will replace her.
Habeas offers a copyrighted poem e-mailers can place in their headers to ensure their e-mail is allowed past the anti-spam filters of ISPs that recognize the header. Spammers who use the header without permission face being sued by Habeas. The company won its first such suit this month.
Before launching Habeas, Mitchell was staff attorney for spam-blocking organization Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC, a group that in the late 1990s was on many direct marketers' most-hated list of companies for reportedly trying to strong-arm marketers into stringent opt-in e-mail list-building tactics.
MAPS lost favor with anti-spammers over a two-year period after it settled a lawsuit with Experian in October 2001 and then sued fellow anti-spammer Gordon Fecyk in spring 2002 claiming he made off with company property, and MAPS has fallen from prominence as a result.
