Two of the Internet's heavyweights have teamed up to knock a particularly noxious species out of the cybersea: the spam phish. Amazon.com and Microsoft have filed several joint lawsuits against such reputed creatures who targeted Hotmail customers by spoofing Amazon's domain and using spoof Amazon Web pages.
Both based in Washington state, Amazon and Microsoft announced September 28 they sued a Canadian company, Gold Disk Canada, and co-defendants including Barry Head and his two sons, Eric and Matthew, in a which the two Net giants accuse of sending millions of deceptive e-mails – including what Amazon and Microsoft call forgeries falsely purporting to come from Amazon, Hotmail, and other hugely familiar domains.
The Amazon/Microsoft suits won applause from Washington state Attorney General Christine Gregoire. "The best way to stop spammers and phishers is to hit them hard in the pocketbook," she said in a statement of her own after the suits were filed. "I am pleased to see Microsoft and Amazon.com team up and use our laws as they were intended. They pose a powerful legal threat and will send a strong message that there will be a high cost to pay for those who flood our mail boxes with irritating, offensive and fraudulent junk mail."
Amazon also filed three separate suits in Seattle against thus-far unidentified defendants said to be tied to phishing schemes – sending fake e-mails disguised to look like a known company's e-stationery, and looking to trick recipients into giving up personal financial information – while Microsoft, too, filed some new suits of its own.
But Microsoft has named defendants in a couple of those suits – including Leonid Radvinsky and his Chicago-based Activsoft, Inc.; and, Cybertania. Microsoft accuses Radvinsky of sending millions of deceptive e-mails to Hotmail users, including some falsely labeled from Amazon.com.
That's a problem that has bedeviled Amazon for several months and possibly longer, according to vice president and associate general counsel David Zapolsky. "Since August 2003, Amazon.com has received tens of thousands of e-mails from customers, alerting us to potentially fraudulent e-mail activity," he said in a statement. We are going to continue our efforts to protect customers from these schemes and will prosecute those responsible to the fullest extents of the law."
Microsoft said they were happy to work with Amazon on these cases and other ways to solve the spam and phish problems. "Today's alliance," said Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, "should be yet another wake-up call for spammers and phishers that the industry is teaming up, pooling resources and sharing investigative information to put them out of business."
