Microsoft, Amazon.com file phishing, spamming lawsuits
546961
Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. filed one joint and several separate lawsuits on Monday against companies and individuals accusing them variously of trying to defraud consumers by imitating Amazon and Microsoft, the companies said Tuesday.
521445
Phishing scams, already one of the main nemesis on the Net, have apparently just become even more sneaky -- and ingenious. Now, it appears phishing authors are borrowing some time-tested tactics
228672
A pair of phishing vulnerabilities this week targeted at Google Inc. point to the kind of new threat Web companies can face as they expand their services into desktop applications, security experts say.
21003
Microsoft and Amazon.com have joined forces against perpetrators of phishing scams, filing a lawsuit against a Canadian company that they say ran a spamming campaign using Microsoft&#39;s Hotmail services and forging Amazon&#39;s name.
513922
The nation&#39;s largest e-mail providers today filed a new round of lawsuits against Internet spammers allegedly responsible for shoveling millions of junk e-mail messages into computer users&#39; in-boxes and their instant messaging screens.
177051
Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O and other  Internet access providers filed three new lawsuits on Thursday  to stop the spread of unsolicited e-mail messages touting  everything from home refinancing to miracle health cures.
503564
Microsoft, America Online (AOL), Yahoo and Earthlink have filed a handful of lawsuits against spammers, allegedly targeting some of the world&#39;s largest unsolicited mail offenders.
145147
A volley of lawsuits was launched against alleged spammers on Thursday by the four major US Internet service providers. This includes a case brought by AOL against twenty individuals accused of spimming, or
62945
Amazon.com and Microsoft Corp., the twin peaks of the Seattle area&#39;s technology community, are joining forces to attack the tide of spam and fraudulent e-mail messages that clog in-boxes
86431
UPDATED: In a coordinated attack against spammers, some of the country&#39;s largest ISPs have filed new lawsuits against businesses and individuals that allegedly deluged users with unwanted and offensive e-mails.
359299
Much of the trouble centered on phishing, a type of attack where fake Web pages are constructed to harvest log-in details, credit card numbers or other personal information. And, oh yes, spam is back.
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.
740160
New versions of SpamKiller and personal firewall aim to hook phishers, as online fraud continues to grow.
587725
Amazon.com was accused in a lawsuit of infringing a Cendant patent for a Web site feature that makes recommendations to consumers based on past purchases.
410050
SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. filed nine new lawsuits against spammers who send unsolicited e-mail, including an e-mail marketing Web hosting company, the world&#39;s largest software maker said Thursday.
239019
Microsoft Corp.  said on  Tuesday it has filed two lawsuits against so-called  "cybersquatters" or "typosquatters" who use the company's  product names to profit illegally from online advertising.
577778
Online retailer Amazon and Microsoft have teamed up to sue a Canadian spamming operation the companies allege is responsible for sending millions of forged e-mails claiming to have come from Amazon.