Spam Reports

MySpace Proves Spamming Is Illegal, Wins $234M Lawsuit

Two MySpace spammers forced to pay $234 million

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

14th of May 2008, 08:34 GMT

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MySpace is one of the most popular social networks on the web

The fact that spamming is annoying, dangerous and, besides all, illegal is well known. However, this doesn't stop spammers from sending tons of unsolicited emails

every day, most of them going straight into our inboxes. The good news is that some of the spammers really pay for their malicious actions, the best example being the case of two MySpace hackers who have just lost a $234 million lawsuit against the popular social networking company. The two spammers, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, sent an estimated number of 700,000 spam messages to MySpace registered users, in a move supposed to bring them a few extra bucks.

The two attackers had quite a simple strategy to get rich: they created new MySpace accounts, or they broke into accounts owned by other users, and sent unsolicited messages that asked members to visit a certain website. The tricky thing is that the spam messages looked like legitimate ones sent by a user's MySpace friends. After getting the users to visit the malicious website, the spammers tried to promote a certain number of ringtones or encouraged users to click on the advertisements.

Since MySpace is affected by such spam attacks every once in a while, the social network sees the lawsuit as an important victory in the fight against spammers and considers that the judge's ruling must be an example for all people out there who may think that spamming is a nice way to get rich.

"MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site. We remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members," Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer at MySpace, told FOXNews. "Anybody who's been thinking about engaging in spam are [sic] going to say, 'Wow, I better not go there'. Spammers don't want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It's our job to send a message to stop them."

TAGS:

myspace | spam | security

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