This week, the company used the US federal CAN-SPAM Act and its local Washington state spam statute to sue potentially dozens of individuals and companies, all of which are currently listed as John Doe defendants.
The complaints allege that the defendants sent spam using falsified email headers and deceptive tactics. Most of the spam outlined in the new suits appears to be enlargement-related, and sent from spoofed Hotmail or MSN addresses.
Microsoft has easily been the most prolific prosecutor of anti-spam laws. Worldwide, it has filed 80 suits. The company says nine defendants have been listed on SpamHaus.org’s Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO).
Microsoft senior attorney Tim Cranton said that so far 11 of the 51 US-based cases have been resolved. The company now has four settlements, two bankruptcies and five judgments totaling $47m under its belt.
We need to change the economics of spam, to make it not worth it, Cranton told ComputerWire. We’re not just going after the original senders, we’re also going after those behind the spam.
Cranton said Microsoft will include in its suits those companies that advertise via spam when it can show that those companies assisted or procured the spamming, as required under the CAN-SPAM Act.
At the same time as filing the latest John Doe suits, Microsoft has amended three of the suits it filed in December to list the real names of the companies and people it thinks are behind spam attacks on its servers.
Cranton said that the main way Microsoft can get this information, or information about the level of knowledge of the advertisers or money men, is by issuing subpoenas after the lawsuit has been filed.
He said that Microsoft intends to continue filing lawsuits, and working with law enforcement agencies on criminal prosecutions, until the spam problem has been solved.
