Microsoft has filed 15 cases in the United States and the United Kingdom to help protect consumers against alleged spammers. The lawsuits allege that the defendants collectively are responsible for flooding Microsoft's customers and its systems with more than 2 billion deceptive unsolicited e-mail messages, commonly referred to as "spam." The company filed the legal actions under Washington state's strong antispam law, which provides Internet service providers (ISPs) with the tools to take action against spammers to protect consumers. The cases address some of the most misleading, deceptive and offensive spam e-mail received by Microsoft customers. As part of the company's enforcement efforts, two additional civil lawsuits were filed in the United Kingdom, alleging the unlawful harvesting of e-mail account names and other illegal spamming practices under the U.K. Misuse of Computers Act of 1990.
