14 DAY TRIAL // Anthony Greco, 18, has become the first person to be arrested for the sending of unsolicited instant messages - or spim. It is alleged Greco sent 1.5 million messages advertising pornography and mortgages. According to US reports the recipients of the messages were all members of the MySpace.com online networking service.
Another issue that looks like Greco is going to be questioned about is the fact that the teenager threatened to share his methods for spamming members of the group if MySpace.com didn't sign an exclusive marketing deal which would have legitimized the messages he was sending via the service.
In fact, the 18-year-old was tricked into believing that the deal was about to be closed and so he flew from New York to Los Angeles. He was arrested upon arrival at LA airport last week.
MySpace.com launched IM for its members in December 2003. Reports claim Greco began spamming members using the service in autumn 2004.
There is help against this time of attacks like Greco launched. Back in December, instant messaging (IM) management company IMLogic partnered with security companies McAfee and Sybari to build IMLogic's Threat Center, which aims to protect users from peer-to-peer and IM threats, such as viruses, worms, spim and malicious code.
The Center monitors servers that attract security threats on private IM networks run by AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo to identify the latest problems in the IM world.