14 DAY TRIAL // Two of the biggest spammers on the web were sent to prison by a federal judge after they caused a lot of problems to numerous Internet consumers and to AOL. In case you missed the news, Jeffrey A. Kilbride from California and James R. Schaffer from Arizona used spam messages to promote hardcore pornographic websites over the web. According to security company Sophos, the emails sent by the two spammers caused no less than 600,000 complaints received by AOL from annoyed users who were assaulted by the unsolicited messages. While Jeffrey A. Kilbride received six years in prison, James R. Schaffer 'won' only five years and three months.
In addition, they received a $100,000 fine each and must pay $77,500 in damages to AOL, the company which was most affected by the spam campaign.
Sophos sustained that although the spammers struggled to use non-US servers to send the messages their location was spotted by the authorities and, after they were identified, they were sent to the judge. Apparently, they used some servers in Amsterdam which were supposed to become part of the spam campaign and send the unwanted emails to the victims. Most of the messages included links to pornographic websites and were sent between 30 January and 9 June 2004.
"Spamming is a big money earner for cybercriminal gangs who have no qualms about swamping email inboxes with offensive messages or breaking into innocent people's PCs," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The authorities have sent a strong message to spammers that their activities will not be tolerated. If you send spam then you are running the gauntlet of spending years locked in a prison cell."
Since this is not a spam attack I have no special recommendation for you than to keep your security solutions up-to-date with the latest improvements. Also, I must applaud the authorities' actions which strive to stop the online malicious activities.