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Microsoft Wins $3.95 Million from Spammer
LehiNephi writes "A Washington, D.C. judge fined Daniel Khoshnood, a major spammer, for pretending to be Microsoft in order to attract customers. Specifically, he registered windowsupdate.com (not to be confused with windowsupdate.microsoft.com), then sent out mass email encouraging users to download a toolbar from that website. Although the suit was not specifically about spamming, the mass emails (and subsequent complaints) were what caught Microsoft's attention. So far, Microsoft's campaign against spam has netted them $54 million from six judgments, one dismissal, four settlements, and two bankruptcies. The article doesn't mention whether the toolbar actually lived up to its claims of automatically applying security patches."
Talk about conflicted. I'm not sure who to root for. Did the spammer use Linux?
So, what do you do when evil is fighting evil?
"Microsoft has recently won a large lump sum of money from a spammer, and is redistributing the money to customers who may have been affected by his spam. In order to claim your money, forward this email to ten of your closest friends within the next 15 minutes"
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
1. Write a popular mail client which automatically executes arbitrary code.
2. Sue the people who hijack PCs via the above mentioned mail client.
3. Profit!
The enemy of my enemy is my friend...
I feel confused.
bash$
I'm not at all surprised by that, considering that Microsoft can't even remember to register their own domain names ;-)
Registering a domain name is negative money. Letting someone else register it and then suing them is positive money. You might even be able to get the domain thrown in with the settlement.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Did they click on the blinking monkey?
My new