A lawsuit has been filed against spammers who hired people to open millions of Hotmail accounts in order to deliberately misidentify spam and game spam filters developed by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) called the Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP) and Smart Network Data Services (SNDS). The JMRP and SNDS are free services created by Microsoft to protect Windows Live Hotmail customers by means of having users report spam and identify legitimate mails.

Microsoft alleged that the fake accounts were used to falsely label up to 200,000 spam messages per day so as to assert their legitimacy. And so the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court under the federal CAN-SPAM Act last week in order to track down the perpetrators behind what the company says is the largest ever spam attack directed at its free Windows Live Hotmail service. Additional details of the lawsuit can be found in blog posting by John Scarrow, who is the general manager of safety services at the Redmond-based software giant.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at IDGNews
- check out this article at Ars Technica

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