Microsoft is accusing the defendants of violating a new antispam law by spoofing their domains, routing e-mail through open proxies, deceiving customers with misleading subject lines and failing to include unsubscribe options in their e-mails.
Spam reports from America Online members dropped from a daily average of almost 11 million in November 2003 to a daily average of about 2.2 million last month, the company said this week.
America Online and Yahoo plan to begin using technology to verify the source of e-mail messages in coming months as both companies work to stop spam e-mail.
An industry organization representing heavyweight e-mail providers Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc. and EarthLink Inc. released recommendations yesterday for ending spam e-mail.
While IP addresses in the U.S. made up just 28% of the spam-sending addresses in a survey by CipherTrust Inc., those addresses sent out much more unsolicited commercial e-mail than spammers from other nations.
U.S. District Court Judge Charles Wolle awarded what is believed to be the largest spam judgment ever to Robert Kramer, an ISP owner who had accused three companies of sending his 5,000 customers millions of pieces of spam in 2003.