The suit of Square-Enix spam
When reporting this story, the sentence, "Never give your e-mail to anyone you don't trust," seems to come to mind. A Japanese man was bombarded with account re-registration e-mails from Final Fantasy XI's PlayOnline launcher, eventually bringing him to the point where he called Square-Enix and asked them to stop sending him the e-mails. The odd part about all of this is that he never played, or even touched Final Fantasy XI.
It seems that one of the gil/item sellers in Japan got hold of his e-mail address, and was using it to create all of their accounts that they use to spam FFXI. Of course the accounts were banned shortly after their creation, but the gilseller continued using the e-mail, creating a tidal wave of spam for this man's e-mail client.
After calling Square-Enix and being told that they could not stop the messages from being sent to his inbox, the man took Square-Enix to court in early 2007. His case was originally denied, but he appealed and won. Now Japan's High Court has blocked Square-Enix's appeal, and the man has been awarded a whopping 56,000 yen. Yes, that's right, two years of legal wranglings for only 556 US dollars and a clean e-mail inbox.
