At the beginning of this month, we brought you news about a mail scam that aimed to steal personal information from Yahoo! Mail users. Back then, it was reported that a number of Yahoo! users had received notification emails that literally made them winners in a Yahoo! Lottery contest, in which they had never voluntarily participated. Obviously, the mail was later unveiled as being a phishing scam, and Yahoo! users were encouraged to take safety precautions before trusting such types of notifications in the future.

It appears that Yahoo! has decided to take serious action against the creators of this Yahoo! Lottery scam and consequently filed a lawsuit against them. The obvious reason for the lawsuit is to make spammers accountable for their actions of deceiving Yahoo users into believing that they have won a lottery or a prize offered by Yahoo!. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. 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.

According to a recent Yahoo! press release, the Sunnyvale company is trying to protect its users from such scams. "The unauthorized use of Yahoo!'s trademarks is misleading, fraudulent, and has actually confused, misled, and deceived the public. Yahoo! will vigorously enforce its intellectual property rights and will not tolerate lottery hoax emails," said Joe Siino, Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Global IP and Business Strategy. John Kremer, Vice President, Yahoo! Mail declared that: "Yahoo! is 100% committed to protecting our users from fraudulent e-mail messages and this lawsuit sends a clear message to spammers."

Yahoo!'s recent actions prove the company's commitment in bringing Internet wrongdoers to face the consequences of their actions. Yahoo! Mail is the most popular Web mail service in the world, meaning that there is a significant number of Yahoo! Mail users that can become victims of such phishing scams. Currently, Yahoo! is protecting its users from over 1 billion spam and fraudulent e-mail messages per day.