"Sexually explicit materials and publications for sale in stores are required by law to be covered from view with a brown paper wrapper, and it's important that consumers are protected on-line in the same way," said Nancy Anderson, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to ensuring that internet users are safe on-line and protected from receiving inappropriate content in e-mail that is unsolicited, unwanted and illegal."
As part of its ongoing campaign against spammers, the company therefore made use of rules brought in by the Federal Trade Commission in May this year that require the warning "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" to be included both in the subject line of any e-mail message that contains sexually oriented material, and in the electronic equivalent of a "brown paper wrapper" in the body of the message.
The FTC was obliged to create the identifier under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or CAN-SPAM Act, as it is known, which was passed in 2003.
The CAN-SPAM Act outlaws fraudulent e-mail and requires marketers to include an unsubscribe option; but it does not address other unsolicited commercial e-mail.
The seven lawsuits were filed on Wednesday against "John Doe" defendants who have yet to be identified. They allege violations of the CAN-SPAM Act and Washington State's Commercial Electronic Mail Act, including the use of compromised computers around the world to route spam e-mail messages, using misleading subject lines, and failing to include an unsubscribe option and physical address.
Collectively, says Microsoft, the spammers in these cases sent hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages to internet users.