Yahoo files lawsuit against alleged lottery spammers

Yahoo Inc. has filed a lawsuit against an unknown group of individuals for allegedly sending unsolicited e-mail messages to Internet users claiming that recipients had won a lottery or a prize from Yahoo.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City, under the Federal Trademark Act and the Federal CAN-SPAM Act.

The complaint alleges that the spammers purposefully pretended to be Yahoo and sent e-mails claiming that the recipient had won a prize from Yahoo. Yahoo does not offer any such awards and has no affiliation or connection with the parties who sent the e-mails.

Spam messages being sent in the guise of being from major online brands is popular among phishing attacks. EBay, PayPal and the IRS have all been victim to spammers sending e-mails claiming to be from these legitimate e-mails with illegitimate messages. This type of scam is called phishing and is designed to trick e-mail recipients into revealing valuable personal data such as passwords, credit card information and social security numbers.

Yahoo Mail has more than 260 million users worldwide.