Yahoo today announced that it has filed a lawsuit against “lottery” spammers, a group of unknown individuals who have been scamming people into thinking they had won some kind of prize or lottery winnings from Yahoo. The Internet giant may very well not see a settlement or even the defendants themselves anytime soon, but that isn’t stopping the company from trying.

Yahoo’s lawsuit was reportedly filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City, under the Federal Trademark Act, the Federal CAN-SPAM Act, and related state laws. The suit “alleges that without permission or authorization, and with full knowledge and notice of Yahoo!’s trademark rights, the spammers willfully masqueraded as Yahoo!, and sent e-mails claiming that the recipient had won a lottery, prize or other award from Yahoo!.” Yahoo neither runs these kinds of contests or lotteries, nor does it hand out these kinds of awards.

The phishing e-mails, if you’re one of the fortunate few to have never seen one, attempt to trick their recipients into handing over personal data like passwords, credit card information, and Social Security numbers. Sometimes this information is used to forge documents or gain access to bank accounts, while some winners were duped into paying hefty shipping and processing fees for their prizes.

As Yahoo runs the most popular webmail service with reportedly 260 million users worldwide, the company touts the fact that it blocks more than a mind-bogging one billion spam and phishing messages each day.

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