Microsoft has sued a Web hosting company it accuses of catering to spammers, plus eight more defendants, in the software empire’s ongoing battle against spam. These latest suits bring the total of spam cases in which Microsoft is involved to over 100, including more than 70 suits in the U.S. alone.
Microsoft sued National Online Sales and the company's owner, Levon Gillespie, in Washington state last week, charging that company with offering so-called "bulletproof" services for those looking to send marketing e-mail. The eight other suits are believed to involve defendants who used National Online's services.
Gillespie has yet to return queries from the press about the suit, but a Microsoft attorney told reporters National Online based its operations in China in order to keep from being shut down in the U.S. "This is the first action against a Web host catering to spammers," Aaron Kornblum said. "They're providing a safe place for spammers to drive customers to."
National Online offers space on computers for serving Web pages and sending e-mail. Kornblum told reporters Microsoft is hoping to change "the economics of spam" by making it prohibitively expensive for spammers to continue.
Microsoft has been fighting spammers in court for over a year, including a July ruling in which a federal court ordered a California defendant to pay Microsoft $4 million for using Microsoft product names in a spam plan.
