Microsoft has announced that it has taken legal action against spammers in the company"s home state of Washington and in the United Kingdom.
Microsoft said it filed 13 civil suits against U.S. defendants, accusing them of spamming Microsoft customers with deceptive e-mail. It also filed two suits in the U.K., where the defendants are accused of illegally harvesting Microsoft e-mail addresses for use in building spam mailing lists.
Microsoft acccused the defendants in the 15 suits of being collectively responsible for sending the company"s customers more than 2 billion unsolicited commercial messages.
"Spam is a growing problem and it"s a global problem," Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, said at a news conference in Redmond, Wash., to announce the suits. "We believe that a multifaceted approach is needed...We at Microsoft are ramping up our efforts to fight spam around the world."