Spammers targeted by Yahoo!

28th May 2008

Internet giant Yahoo! has filed a lawsuit against a group of email spammers for trying to con web users into believing they had won a lottery prize.

The phishing lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New under the Federal Trademark Act, the Federal CAN-SPAM Act and related state laws.

According to Yahoo!, email spammers "without permission or authorisation … wilfully masqueraded as Yahoo! and sent emails claiming that the recipient had won a lottery, prize or other award from Yahoo!".

The internet company noted that this kind of scam attempted to encourage unsuspecting customers into giving out personal information that could lead to them having money or their identity stolen.

Joe Siino, senior vice president of Yahoo! global IP and business strategy, said: "The unauthorised use of Yahoo!'s trademarks is misleading, fraudulent and has actually confused, misled and deceived the public."

He added that the company would enforce its intellectual property rights and would not put up with lottery hoax emails.

Meanwhile, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has issued enforcement notices to ten companies identified as being those used to register most domain names involved in spam emails; if a company does not comply with the notice, it could have its accreditation withdrawn.