NWI Insights - Microsoft files 15 civil lawsuits to fight the increasing problems of spam

Last week on NWI, a report by Channel 4 news featured the growing problems and concerns of unsolicited emails or spam. Many computer users are fed up with their email accounts being filled with unsolicited emails and one computer giant is now taking a stand against spam. Microsoft is filing 15 civil lawsuits against businesses in the US and the UK who are responsible for vast volumes of spam, states the report.

Much of the unsolicited emails are marketing strategies to advertise quick get rich schemes, pornography, cheap viagra and even enhancing one's anatomy. From 100,000 emails sent, responses from just one or two of the emails makes the sender money. Behind many of the spam schemes are organized crime or dubious companies, the report explains.

MSN and Hotmail email accounts have often been targeted by the spammers, asserts the report. Two unnamed businesses are being sued in the UK by Microsoft for what are known as dictionary attacks. Stephen Harvey from Microsoft explained that in such an attack one of their servers was hit half a million times with 3 million email addresses generated by a computer program. In this instance from the 3 million around 225,000 were valid names and these, explains Harvey, are then stored by the company and the data is subsequently misused.

In the past year, the prevalence of spam has greatly increased. In 2002 it was estimated that only 5% of email could be considered spam and now in 2003 this has risen to 55%, the report states. The problem of spam looks only to increase with time and better tools and laws need to be developed to fight it.

The report furthers that in November this year, the UK is proposing a new law which introduces an opt-out system. That is if an email is sent and unwanted, the recipient has the chance to unsubscribe or opt out of any further emails being sent. If they then receive any future emails from the same company, it would be seen as a breach of the law. The decision by the government for the opt out system has been a relief for many legitimate direct marketing companies who regularly use email marketing as a strategy of promotion.

The report explains that there are only a couple of hundred hard core spammers who generate the huge volumes of unsolicited emails. Many of these are in the US, particularly in Florida where there is no law against spamming. This highlights one of the key problems in stopping spamming, the differences in laws not just in different countries but within different states in the US. Congress is considering making spamming a federal offense but even then the battle is not over. Spamming is an international problem but as yet there is no international solution or law to prevent the daily nuisance. The spammers know the weakest links contends the report and the UK is seen to be an excellent market for spam.

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