Slashdot Mirror
MS Gets $7 Million From Spammer
pin_gween writes "Reuters UK reports that Microsoft has settled its spam suit against Scott Richter for $7 million. From the article: 'Microsoft and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had sued Richter in late 2003, asserting that he had sent, or helped other spammers send, billions of e-mail messages to consumers touting everything from herbal products to loan consolidation schemes.'"
Note that the settlement doesn't prevent richter from spamming.
From TFA:
Nevertheless, Richter said that he and his company had changed their e-mailing practices and pledged not to send spam to anyone who has not asked to be sent commercial e-mail.
So supposedly, from now on he will only be mailing to users who have "opted in". Hmm.. sounds familiar.
RTFA.
Additionally, as part of the settlement, Richter agreed to drop bankruptcy proceedings filed in March in the U.S. bankruptcy court in Denver, according to a joint statement by Microsoft and Richter. The settlement is conditioned on dismissal of the bankruptcy cases.
Everyone gets spammed and somehow Microsoft gets $7M. How does that work?
Microsoft sued Richter for the spam that Microsoft received and had to deal with -- ie: through MSN, Hotmail, etc. If you, running your own ISP, also received spam from Richter then you are free to sue as well. Setup and issue a call for donating to your legal prosecution fund and let us know how it goes.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Share it? Sure, send this article to a thousand of your friends, and for each one that forward it on to other friends, MS will pay you $1. ;o)
my geeklog
To add spice to your already excellent post...
There is a study floating around (can't recall where) that found that spammers aren't making money off the products they "offer". They are making their money by selling email addresses to other spammers. Email address harvesting is where the true spammer makes his bread...
Still, how this translates into Microsoft getting the loot is beyond me.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I stumbled across this site a few months ago: Spam. Don't Buy It. It's an educational campaign to convince people not to buy stuff from spammers. There's a nice diagram of the spam business cycle, illustrating how few customers the spammer really needs to make a profit.