Yahoo!® To Get US$ 610 Million After Winning Lawsuit Against Spammers

A compensation amount of US$ 610 million for Yahoo, which won a lawsuit against a group of spammers

This could be a windfall as well as an image booster for Yahoo, which has just been compensated with an amount of US$ 610 million after it won a lawsuit against a group of spammers. Yahoo had filed the lawsuit in 2008 after it discovered that some spammers were running a fake lottery scheme in its name. By offering a lottery prize, the spammers tried to entice people into revealing confidential information like credit card details, passwords, etc. Some simpletons who were declared winners transferred money into the bank accounts of spammers for some assumed processing fees and courier charges for prizes that were never dispatched.

Out of the total amount of US$ 610 million, US$ 27 million was the penalty for trademark infringement and the remaining US$ 583 million was charged for the violation of the US CAN-SPAM Act.

“Yahoo takes the protection of its users and its brand very seriously,” said Christian Dowell, legal director of global brand protection at Yahoo. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure that users continue to trust Yahoo as the leading U.S. e-mail provider.”

Yahoo, however, will have to work hard to extract the compensation amount from the defendants who are located in some other countries. The court documents indicated that they neither responded to the complaint nor did they appear in the court.

Post the unearthing of this scam, Yahoo teamed up with other companies like Microsoft, Western Union, and the African Development Bank to enlighten people about the perils of online lottery scam.

The below video explains about lottery scams: