MS wins $4m from spammer scammmer
Friday, 16 July 2004 22:01 EST
Microsoft has won a $3.95m judgement against a California man who used a combination of cybersquatting and spamming tactics to scare vulnerable users into downloading adware. Daniel Khoshnood of Canoga Park, California, ran a pair of spam campaigns last year to coax consumers into running a toolbarwhich claimed to automatically download Microsoft's latest security patches from a site called "Windowsupdatenow.com". In reality, the toolbar loaded a utility called called BrowserAid/QuickLaunch which bombarded users with random, unrequested pop-up ads.
The scam came to light after MSN and Hotmail users complained to Microsoft about the bogus emails. Redmond in turn sent its lawyers after Khoshnood and two companies he ran (Pointcom and Joshua-than Investments) linked to the scam. Microsoft also sued ten other unnamed defendants in the same suit.
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