Software giant Microsoft on Tuesday launched a series of lawsuits in the US and the UK as part of a new aggressive global campaign to stop the flood of junk e-mail, the strongest indication yet of how seriously the company is reacting the growing threat of spam.
Corporations are expected to spend as much as $20bn this year to fight spam, the unwanted commercial e-mail that now accounts to about half of all e-mail traffic on the internet.
The company said the lawsuits - 13 in the US and 2 in the UK -- allegedly involve 15 of the world's biggest spammers, who accounted for more than 2bn junk e-mails that clogged networks and e-mail inboxes with voluminous and often offensive messages.
The software giant said the cases reflect Microsoft's new proactive global approach to dealing with spam, which continued to increasing at an alarming rate. Tim Cranton, a senior attorney at Microsoft, said a...