07:36 AM PDT on Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Associated Press

AP

SEATTLE – Amazon.com and Microsoft have announced they are filing lawsuits against spammers who scam consumers with phony e-mail.

The companies say they are going after online thieves who mislead and defraud consumers by spoofing and phishing.

"Spoofing" is using a forged e-mail address to conceal a sender's identity. "Phishing" is sending a forged e-mail to trick consumers into revealing financial information.

One suit, filed in federal court in Seattle, accuses a Canadian company of a spam campaign that used Microsoft's Hotmail to send Amazon.com forgeries.

In addition to the lawsuit filed jointly with Microsoft, Amazon filed another three lawsuits in King County Superior Court in Seattle against unidentified defendants.

Microsoft filed a separate lawsuit against a Chicago business accused of sending spam e-mails falsely labeled as coming from Amazon.