Microsoft get $7m from spammers

Goodshape

BBC link.

bbc wrote:

US software giant Microsoft has won a $7m (£3.9m) court settlement from a businessman considered to be one of the world's biggest senders of spam e-mail.

Scott Richter agreed to pay the sum after Microsoft filed a lawsuit against his internet firm Opt In Real Big.

Microsoft alleged Opt In Real Big had sent millions of unsolicited commercial e-mails, using forged sender names and false subject lines.

Anyone care to explain to me why Microsoft gets to make money from this? Seven million is surly chump change to MS, but it's still a lot of money. So not only do I get inundated with unwanted emails -- but these bastards (MS) get to make money from it. Money used too "further boost its campaign against e-mail spammers".. surly little more than a PR exercise.

When do I get $7 million for all the emails YOU'VE received? The mind boggles.

stevenmu

Apparantly details on how to collect your $7 million were emailed to you but the mail was rejected by your spam filters. Microsoft, naturally, have no spam protection and therefore recieved their mail

Being serious though, the reason they get money is because they can afford the lawyers to bring cases against spammers, and they can dedicate resources to see what affect spam is having on their business and quantifying it's cost to them.

Endurance Man

What he said ^^

Shing

I guess Microsoft is the lesser of two evils.

Regards,
Wai Shing

secret_squirrel

It would be interesting to see what they do with the cash.

AOL recently raffled off a hummer and some gold bars they obtained as payment from a spammer.