In the latest stage of its fight against unsolicited commercial
e-mail, Microsoft has filed eight lawsuits over the last two weeks,
accusing almost 200 alleged spammers of breaches of the recently
implemented CAN-SPAM Act, according to reports.
The suits allege that the spammers have breached requirements of
the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and
Marketing Act by using false and deceptive headers and subject
lines; having no unsubscribe facility in their e-mails, and using
open proxies (sending spam through third-party computers to
disguise their point of origin).
E-mail software company MX Logic measured compliance with
CAN-SPAM at just 1% of spam during the month of May, down from 3%
in April, based on samples of up to 10,000 spam e-mails each week.
In the past month, it also found that only 15% of pornographic
unsolicited e-mails complied with a new FTC rule requiring such
spam to be labelled "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" in the subject line.
Each of the eight suits filed by Microsoft targets no less than
20 spammers, most of whom are at this stage unidentified, and asks
that the court grants injunctions against them, as well as an
unspecified damages.
Worldwide, Microsoft is now involved in around 80 actions
against spammers.
