Perhaps encouraged by other recent legal victories over spammers, Yahoo acknowledged Tuesday that it had unleashed its own legal dogs to track down and convict the spammers who allegedly hijacked the Yahoo name for spam. The Web giant recently filed suit against the anonymous offenders, still labeled “John/Jane Does 1-25,” in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City.
According to Yahoo, the spammers posed as representatives of the company in a slew of phishing e-mails claiming recipients had won the Yahoo Lottery, a contest that doesn’t actually exist. Like all phishing schemes, duped “winners” would be conned into revealing passwords, credit card information, social security numbers and in some cases, even sending money to the spammers for “processing and mailing charges.”
