Mass. Attacks Spam

In Massachusetts a judge has ordered that a major spam operation be shutdown.

According to investigators, the organization may have been one of the largest senders of unwanted email in the world. Microsoft worked with authorities to provide supporting evidence against the company.

The company goes by the names 2K Services and Ecash Pay Limited. The cooperative was apparently behind countless emails that were in violation of the CAN-SPAM act. Spamming itself is not made illegal by CAN-SPAM. However, it does attempt to block spammers from using many fraudulent practices common to unwanted email.

Over the last year, Microsoft has made multiple efforts to pursue spammers using the legal system. It's Hotmail operation is heavily impacted by spam, so it can easily claim a financial stake in many lawsuits aimed at blocking junk email.

Microsoft has previously been pitted against some of the same legal representatives involved in its anti-trust suite. In this case, Microsoft is working cooperatively with those same parties. To date, no study has conclusively found any legal efforts have significantly reduced the amount of spam sent or received on the internet.

SpamButcher can be used as anti-spam software for Outlook or with most other popular email clients that use standard internet protocols.

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