Microsoft to Teach Lesson to Spamming Companies

Software giant Microsoft Corp. based in The Redmond (Washington) has filed a legal complaint against Hong Kong-based Funmobile Ltd. and its subsidiary Mobilefundster based in California, reported bizjournal.com on July 16, 2009.

Microsoft has raised accused Funmobile Ltd. for circulating thousands of spam instant messages during March-June 2009. It is noted that the instant messages contained links of phishing websites that were under the company's control.

According to reports, people who clicked any of such links would sometimes find themselves on a site called 'MeetYourIM', which directed them for entering their MSN e-mail ID and password in order to partake in a so-called "Harmless community site which is offering users a platform to meet each other for free."

In case the victim entered the asked details, Funmobile would obtain the e-mail addresses of all the people listed in his friend's list and then, spam them in the same way, revealed Microsoft, as per the news published by PCWorld on July 16, 2009.

Commenting on the latest lawsuit, Microsoft's Associate General Counsel of Internet safety enforcement, Tim Cranton, stated that by means of filing this lawsuit, Microsoft is looking forward to achieve three main goals. Most important of those goals is to prevent individuals and companies from continuing the spam attacks through legal ban. It also wants the recovery for all the monetary damages it suffered due to the attacks. Third thing it is aiming to achieve is to send a clear message to other people/firms who are using similar attack tactics, reported cnet.com on July 16, 2009.

Cranton, in his blog post, stated that users of Windows Live must not reveal their Windows Live password and ID to any third party expect Microsoft, reported PCWorld on July 16, 2009,

It is believed that presently there are over 320 Million Microsoft Windows Live Messenger users in the world. However, the suit gives no account of the exact number of victims whose credentials had been obtained by third parties as the number is yet unknown. In the end, the suit said that the attacks have certainly created a lot of pressure on the servers of Microsoft running the service and the security experts that are now needed to pay more attention on monitoring and combating the future attacks, which, in turn, would increase the operating cost of the company.

Related article: Microsoft Patches Live OneCare to Tackle Quarantined E-Mails

» SPAMfighter News - 8/1/2009