Microsoft to Spammer: That’ll be $7.4 million, please.   - 1,475 Views,

Glenn Hannifin, the ‘proprietor’ of U Save Depot, was accused by Microsoft of sending millions of pieces of spam hawking everything from software to leather jackets. The software offered included copies of Microsoft Office, discounted to a fraction of its actual value, giving rise to the probability that the software was pirated.

According to the Microsoft lawsuit, in addition to sending millions of pieces of unwanted email to users of its Hotmail service, Hannifan also used false and misleading headers, and violated both the Washington state and Federal anti-spam laws.

Hannifan was also on the losing end of a lawsuit filed by a California anti-spam activist, Daniel Balsam. Balsam’s lawsuit alledged many of the same things as did the Microsoft suit, in addition to claiming that Hannifan’s email violated California’s anti-spam statute.

The Court awarded Balsam a little over $17,000, which may seem like a lot less than the $7+million which Microsoft was awarded, but the odds of Balsam collecting his judgement monies are as good as those of Microsoft. That is to say, slim to none.