MS wins $4 m suit against spammer

SEATTLE: A federal judge in California awarded Microsoft Corp. $4 million after finding that a California man and his company had sent spam, or unsolicited e-mail, to users of its MSN and Hotmail services to get them to download a toolbar onto their computer desktops.

Judge Manuel Real of the U.S. Central District Court of California found that Daniel Khoshnood and Pointcom Inc. had violated several laws against using deceptive e-mail and Web addresses, ordering the defendants to pay damages, attorneys fees and cease any activity that purports to be official communication from Microsoft.

Calls to an address listed for Khoshnood in Canoga Park and Woodland Hills, California, were not answered. The judgment was handed down last week and disclosed by Microsoft on Thursday.

"These individuals need to understand that their activity is illegal and that if they inundate consumers with spam they will be identified, targeted and sued," said Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement Attorney. "The legal and financial consequences they can face are very real."

The world's largest software company has launched a barrage of lawsuits against spammers over the past year in an attempt to curb the spread of unsolicited e-mail advertisements.

Microsoft already has more than a dozen legal victories among the 60 lawsuits it has filed, most of which are still pending. More than $54 million in judgments has been handed down, the company said.

But Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith has said that legal action against spammers is only a part of a broader strategy to stop spam that also involves the use of technology, regulation and partnerships with other technology providers.

Among the orders issued by the judge in a summary judgment, Khoshnood and Pointcom were told to "refrain from including the domain names "hottmail.com", "wwwwindows.com", "microsoftc.com", "wwmsn.com", "bcentrals.com" and windowsupdatenow.com"," according to court documents.

In one spam campaign, e-mail recipients got messages with statements such as "WINDOWS SECURITY WARNING!!" or "A VIRUS HAS BEEN DETECTED ON YOUR COMPUTER. IN ORDER FOR YOUR COMPUTER NOT TO CRASH YOU WILL NEED TO GO TO WINDOWSUPDATENOW.COM" in the subject line, Microsoft said in a statement.