The suits allege that the spammers have breached requirements of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act by using false and deceptive headers and subject lines; having no unsubscribe facility in their e-mails, and using open proxies (sending spam through third-party computers to disguise their point of origin).
E-mail software company MX Logic measured compliance with CAN-SPAM at just 1% of spam during the month of May, down from 3% in April, based on samples of up to 10,000 spam e-mails each week. In the past month, it also found that only 15% of pornographic unsolicited e-mails complied with a new FTC rule requiring such spam to be labelled "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" in the subject line.
Each of the eight suits filed by Microsoft targets no less than 20 spammers, most of whom are at this stage unidentified, and asks that the court grants injunctions against them, as well as an unspecified damages.
Worldwide, Microsoft is now involved in around 80 actions against spammers.