Microsoft Sues 117 Phishers 170
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week Microsoft filed 117 John Doe cases today to learn the identity of scam artists who have been targeting its Hotmail and MSN customers in phishing scams, according to a Washington Post story. This is the same tactic the music and motion picture industries have used to mixed success against file-swappers, except in this case the ISPs themselves are some of the biggest targets of phishing scams. The story says the tactic has already worked once for Microsoft; in a case last year where ISP subpoenas led to a kid in Iowa who was caught phishing MSN users from his grandpa's dial-up account. The 21-year-old was ordered to pay Microsoft $3 million, but I doubt his job at Blockbuster is going to make a dent in that debt."
Make Money Fast! (Score:4, Interesting)
I acutally thank Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
So who gets the cash ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Microsoft if it was to do the decent thing would just hand over the evidence to the Police
by suing they get to make a load of cash at the same time all at the expense of people the phishers ripped off in teh first place, where some see shit others see gold
nice huh
Re:Phishing != File trading (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't 'own' the work, you only own the copy of it.
Phishers you the information that you willing supply them, file traders distribute a copy of a file that was willingly supplied to them.
'Well, I just put up this site that looked like a bank, sent some people a few emails asking them to play around with my site and they gave me all their details. Who would have thought that.'
If anything Phishers just point out how poor security on the Internet and in general life is, phishers shouldn't ever be able to get your personal information.
I wonder how many viruses are written to take peoples private SSL keys.