It appears that the lawsuit was filed in the federal court for the
Northern District of California and does not name the defendants.
This kind of suit, known as a "John Doe" suit, will allow Microsoft
to issue subpoenas as the complaint is being investigated.
The software giant reportedly claims that the spammers
discovered Hotmail accounts by using software that trawls through
every entry in a dictionary and attempts to 'guess' passwords. The
programme has, according to Microsoft, compiled millions of e-mail
addresses, many of which are active.
At the same time, in an essay posted on its web site, Microsoft
claims that there are currently no US laws expressly prohibiting
the use of automated means to gather e-mail addresses without the
owners' consent and urges the country's legislators to tackle the
problem.
According to Microsoft, spam thrives because spammers face
virtually no economic constraints. The company said that "sending
e-mail is so cheap that spammers can turn a profit even if only one
in 100,000 recipients responds".
Finally, Microsoft has said it will "intensify " its efforts to
co-operate with ISPs in fighting spam.
ISPs are increasingly resorting to legal action to deal with
spam. In December 2002, AOL won damages totalling almost $7 million
in a legal victory against a company that sent over one billion
junk e-mail messages to its customers advertising adult web
sites.
Microsoft's essay on spam is available at:
www.microsoft.com/issues/essays/2003/02-12spam.asp
