March 31st, 2005
Gates proves real resolve in bringing spammers to justice
Being somewhat of a tech-weenie — one who’s gone on endless tirades about spam — I’ve always favored technical approaches over legal approaches to that which ails us when it comes to e-mail. Before most people knew what phishing was (which was only last year), I tried to sound the alarm, and, true to form, focused exclusively on technical and educational countermeasures. I’ve never given much credence to legal approaches for two reasons. First, the Internet’s international nature creates a forbidding legal environment when it comes to passing laws and bringing transgressors to justice. Second, it didn’t seem to me like any single company had the stomach to keep after the scum that are ruining the Net for the rest of us.
Unless that company is Microsoft.
Today, according to a report by News.com’s Matt Hines, "Microsoft has filed 117 lawsuits against people who it charges created phishing Web sites designed to look like pages hosted by the software giant." 117. That’s not a small number of lawsuits for one day.
This isn’t Microsoft’s first such suit. Back in February 2003, Microsoft went on the legal offensive against Hotmail spammers. In December 2003, Microsoft joined forces with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to break up some New York-based spamming rings. In September 2004, Microsoft teamed up with Amazon to file another round of suits. A month later, in October, the Redmond, Wash.-based company hooked up with AOL and Yahoo to file suits in Washington, Georgia and California, accusing defendants of violating the federal Can-Spam Act. Then, as a little Christmas present, Microsoft went after some pornographic spammers in December 2004. This isn’t the exhaustive list. Just some examples.
But to really size up Microsoft’s legal effort on the spam and phishing front, I contacted Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft’s Internet safety enforcement attorney. Judging by his answers, Kornblum has to be the most feared man in the spam and phishing underworld. According to Kornblum, since the beginning of 2003, Microsoft has filed 96 lawsuits against spammers, and 119 lawsuits against phishers. By any measure, 215 lawsuits constitutes a legal juggernaut. Someone at Microsoft clearly has the stomach, the resources, and the will to do whatever it takes to teach spammers and phishers a lesson. When I asked Kornblum who that was he didn’t hesitate: "Bill Gates." Spam and phishing apparently get under the skin of Bill Gates like few other scourges of technology.
I asked Kornblum how much personal gratification he’s deriving from the effort. Kornblum was all business: "This is important work and it’s part of a more comprehensive approach involving education, legislation, and technology. It’s a privilege to be working at the forefront of the enforcement efforts and it’s great to be working with the various Attorneys General, the Federal Trade Commission, and law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service." Earlier this year, Kornblum joined forces with the Texas Attorney General’s office to sue 22-year-old advertising major Ryan Pitylak, the fourth largest spammer in the world according to Spamhaus.
In describing how Microsoft worked with the Texas AG’s office, Kornblum gave an inside peek at how it’s working with law enforcement agencies to tighten the noose on spammers and phishers. According to Kornblum, Microsoft was contacted by Texas AG Greg Abbott to find out if any of Pitylak’s offending domains were turning up as sources of spam in Microsoft’s Hotmail e-mail service. The folks at Hotmail, as it turns out, run about 100,000 trap accounts that aren’t publicized, but that can easily become the target of spam through what’s known as a dictionary attack (this is where a spammer sends spam to e-mail address on a trial-and-error basis using dictionary entries in combination with "@hotmail.com" as fodder for trialing e-mail addresses. When Microsoft scanned its trap accounts for spam from Pitylak’s domains, it scored a hit and now, the legal wheels are turning against Pitylak.
While lawsuits are one thing, Korblum emphasized that the end results also speak for themselves. Last Friday, Scott Richter, the proprietor of optinrealbig.com and the man who Spamhaus considered the world’s third largest spammer, filed for corporate bankruptcy in a Denver court. Richter was swept up when Microsoft teamed up with New York’s Spitzer.
So, why am I writing about this? Well, it’s not enough that Microsoft (and others) are suing spammers and phishers and driving them into bankruptcy. The lawsuits won’t have their intended affect unless the word gets out that Microsoft is on the hunt and that Kornblum has a message. What’s that message? Kornblum made it clear saying: "We’re telling phishers and spammers that we will not tolerate their conduct on our systems and that we’ll do everything we can to identify, target, and pursue them." Are you a spammer or phisher? If you are, you could be next on Kornblum’s list. If you’re not, then I’m deputizing you to make sure that this message, along with my report of Microsoft’s track record, makes the rounds. Sure, there will be spammers who think they can evade folks like Kornblum, Spitzer, and Abbott. But for every one of them, there will be others who–when they see what happened to Scott Richter as a result of Gates’ resolve–hopefully will realize that spamming and phishing are bad career choices.
| 04/13/05
