Microsoft sue Israeli spammer for $500,000
Microsoft has filed a $500,000 law suit against a man suspected of being Israel's leading spammer.
30-year-old Amir Gans is said to be responsible for sending more than 50% of all of the spam email in Israel.
In July 2004 Gans was sued by the Israeli ISP Golden Lines for a quarter of a million shekels (approximately $57,300) after his company, New Approach, allegedly sent 510,000 junk emails over 18 hours. As a result, Golden Lines says, the ISP's servers were blacklisted by anti-spam organisations blocking legitimate emails and damaging their reputation.
Gans is a well-known figure in the Israeli Internet community, speaking often on the subject of Internet privacy and direct marketing email, and is said to readily admit to running a company which sends bulk email.
Microsoft Israel allege that Gans' company not only sent unsolicited adverts via email to their clients, but also disguised the emails as coming from Hotmail Israel in an attempt to trick recipients into opening the message.
