Phishermen beware! Microsoft is done screwing around with you and your scamming friends! The Industry Standard is reporting that Microsoft filed 117 civil lawsuits against those who are out to steal our personal data.

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday filed 117 civil lawsuits against alleged phishers trying to scam Microsoft customers out of personal information such as credit card numbers.

The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seek to identify large-scale scam operations and recover damages from so-called phishing operations. Phishers typically send out spam e-mail, made to look like official e-mail from a real e-commerce company, asking recipients to click on a link and update their personal information. The link takes consumers to a Web site that mimics the look of the real e-commerce company, but collects personal information for ID thieves to use.

The new phishing lawsuits — Microsoft previously went after two other phishing schemes using lawsuits — target unnamed defendants who sent spam e-mail and put up Web sites targeting Microsoft services such as MSN and Hotmail, Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft’s Internet safety attorney, said in a Washington, D.C., press conference. Through the lawsuits, Microsoft will issue subpoenas and attempt to uncover the names of the scam artists, as well as identify support operations such as Web hosting services and mass e-mail services, he said.

Microsoft is using trademark law to target the phishers, who use the company’s trademarks on their e-mail messages and Web sites, Kornblum said. [Read the rest]