Amazon and Microsoft Take Legal Action To Crush Spam
2481
Amazon.com and Microsoft have joined to push what they described as a &quot;wake-up call&quot; to spammers, filing lawsuits against defendants they say sent millions of pieces of spam and who attempted
259486
A campaign by anti-spam groups has persuaded a large US net service provider to ban spammers using its network.
414705
Microsoft Corp. filed nine new lawsuits against spammers who send unsolicited e-mail, including an e-mail marketing Web hosting company, the world's largest software maker said on Thursday
362551
Microsoft&#39;s legal department has its eye on more than fake certificates of authenticity. The company today gave word that it has begun legal proceedings against seven spammers for violating CAN-SPAM&#39;s Brown Paper Wrapper rule.
30138
Microsoft has joined big Internet service providers, America Online, EarthLink and Yahoo against spamming. The companies announced they are filing three new antispam
269359
(InfoWorld) - Hoping to tackle the growing problem of pump-and-dump stock scams Microsoft has quietly filed lawsuits against at least three alleged perpetrators who it says used its MSN Hotmail networks to promote stocks. Hotmail has "received large volumes of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages" promoting stocks for such companiesÂ as Distributed Power, TGC Ventures, China Biolife Enterprises, and Irwin Resources, according to court documents filed during April and May in King County Superior Court in Seattle. Microsoft charges the defendants with violating the federal CAN-SPAM act as well as Washington state consumer protection laws and is seeking unspecified damages, according to the filings. Pump-and-dump e-mail scams are a form of fraud where the criminals purchase stock in a company -- typically an inexpensive penny stock -- and then promote the equity in millions of unsolicited email messages. The technique is one of the more lucrative spamming practices and has been "the fastest growing area in spam" over the past few months, said Craig Schmugar, a threat research manager with McAfees' Avert Labs. Pump-and-dump spam has not only taken up resources and threatened the smooth functioning of Hotmail, but it "continues to result in significant costs to Microsoft," the court filings state. Microsoft executives were not immediately available to comment for this story. Because Microsoft does not know the name of the spammers behind the unsolicited e-mails, it has filed the lawsuits as "John Doe" cases, giving it the power to subpoena information in the case and ultimately name the parties responsible when they are uncovered. It's the latest move in the cat and mouse game between pump-and-dump spammers and the technology companies trying to stop them. Pump-and-dump scams are gaining more attention from criminals and companies like Microsoft for one simple reason: They work. Researchers at Purdue and Oxford Universities recently examined the dynamics of pump-and-dump and found that spammers could realize 5 percent returns in a single day. Because these scams are so lucrative, they've attracted some of the most technically competent spammers to develop new techniques, said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist at Cloudmark. "The pump-and-dump schemes are basically driving spam research and development," he said. Primarily, this research has centered around the creation of templates that can be used by infected PCs to create spam messages and on a form of e-mail known as image spam, O'Donnell said. These image spam messages look just like any other e-mail but are in fact .jpg or .gif images. Image spam is also particularly well-suited to pump-and-dump because the fraudsters don't need victims to click on a link for scam to work. Over the past year, image spammers have developed a variety of techniques to confuse spam filters, said McAfee's Schmugar. They've added colorful backgrounds, wavy text, and filled their messages with nonsense text to try to evade optical character recognition technologies, he said. For example, a recent spam message promoting China Biolife Enterprises, one of the stocks named in Microsoft's suit, contained the following message: "Symbol CBFE Price $1.55 (UP 11.51%) Target $4 Market: Bullish. Strangler minott goodnight bennett rebel rousers." With the jump in pump-and-dump e-mail, O'Donnell said it's no surprise that Microsoft has brought the lawsuits. "Hotmail is heavily used and is viewed by the Web community as one of the most challenging spam environments right now," he said.
154791
DECEMBER 02, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Microsoft Corp. is again using the courts to pursue individuals allegedly responsible for spam e-mail campaigns, this time going after those who send out unsolicited and sexually explicit e-mail.
164721
Microsoft and Amazon.com have joined forces to take legal action against US and Canadian-based companies for allergy sending fraudulent e-mails to Amazon and Hotmail users, claiming to represent these companies.
527562
By The Roanoke Times, Va.  Sep. 8--The Virginia Court of appeals this week upheld protections for people tired of spam in their e-mail inboxes. A state crackdown, however, will not much dent the spam machine. Effective federal legislation and enforcement is required.
393723
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has made a series of arrests against purveyors of e-mail "spam" as part of a nationwide crackdown against Internet scam artists, a marketing group said Wednesday.    The Direct Marketing Association, which has put up $500,000 to help the FBI and Justice Department with the probe, said in a statement that the arrests stem from a yearlong investigation intended to "engender greater trust and comfort in legitimate e-mail communications."   Details of "Operation Slam Spam" were expected to be announced Thursday, according to the marketing group and a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity...
14515
Microsoft Corp is suing a company it claims provides so-called &quot;bulletproof&quot; web hosting to spammers. A company attorney said it is the first time anybody has been sued for allegedly providing spam &quot;support services&quot;.
321247
Blog: Spammers appear to defeat Captcha and use fake Microsoft and Yahoo Web mail addresses to spread spam.
147647
Do you have any suggestions for individuals and small businesses to combat spam?
130045
Some of the net's biggest players such as AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo are stepping up efforts to combat spam.
162137
Microsoft and Amazon.com are teaming up to sue a Canadian-based company that they say ran a phishing scheme. &quot;They are going to crush this guy legally,&quot; Panda Software CTO Patrick Hinojosa Hinojosa gleefully observes.
161530
Microsoft intensified its legal assault on spam with the filing of seven lawsuits against alleged spammers marketing sexually explicit material, the company said last week.
229375
Challenge/response e-mails accidentally marked as spam by AOL and EarthLink.