Microsoft has stopped a UK man from selling lists of email addresses to spammers. Paul Martin McDonaldsold sold details that were then used as spam lists through his company Bizads. Microsoft was granted a summary judgement against McDonald, arguing that it was suffering loss and damage to the goodwill it has as operator of Hotmail.
Judge Lewison, who heard the case, decided Bizads had breached the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), a UK law which includes regulations designed to halt the sending of unsolicited email. "The evidence plainly established that the business of Bizads was supplying email lists of persons who had not consented to receive direct marketing mail and that it had encouraged purchasers of the lists to send emails to those people," said Lewison.