Microsoft sues firm for instant messaging spam
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in instant messaging, passwords, phishing, Microsoft on
Many people who use Windows Messenger are familiar with those instant messages that prompt you to click on a link to spam, or someone taking control of their account to spam everybody on their friend’s list.
Given the name “SPIM”, Microsoft is now making efforts to deal with this, taking legal action which alleges a company called Funmobile conduced a campaign to spim Microsoft customer contacts, and undermine their privacy.
Microsoft is asking the court to grant an injunction to stop the activity as well as get monetary damages - hoping to send a message that this isn’t tolerated.
Microsoft alleged that the Hong-Kong based company came up with a scheme targeting customers that appeared to come from the email address of a known friend, and invite the recipient to click.
Customers who clicked on the link were then ‘phished’ - asked for their IM username and password to login, and redirected to a porn site or a social networking community.
Microsoft then allege that Funmobile collected the usernames and passwords to access Microsoft’s systems and customer accounts. Scraping or harvesting the contacts from each of the users, they sent unsolicited bulk emails.
The enterprise view
Michael Remond, chief executive of IM firm ProcessOne, said that Microsoft was right to raise the fight against SPIM, and that it highlighted the dangers of businesses using IM platforms.
He said: “As enterprises increasingly use IM and chat applications for internal and customer communications, security is more important than ever.
“Microsoft and other public IM platforms have a long way to go to be suitable and safe for the enterprise.”
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