Master spammer is fined $1 million

[question everything]

Master spammer is fined $1 million

Graduate now helps ward off junk e-mail

By Howard Witt
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

June 4, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas – For every weary Internet user who has ever slogged through an e-mail inbox infested with junk spam, payback time has finally arrived.

The state of Texas and Microsoft Corp. have just throttled a 24-year-old University of Texas graduate once ranked among the world's worst purveyors of spam, fining him at least $1 million, stripping him of most of his ill-gotten assets and forcing him to stop sending nuisance e-mails forever.

The punishments are contained in settlements of two civil lawsuits filed by the Texas attorney general and Microsoft against the spammer, Ryan Pitylak, who admitted to sending out a mind-boggling 25 million nuisance e-mails every day at the height of his spamming operation in 2004. What's more, Pitylak now says he has been reborn as an anti-spammer, and he's offering his skills to Internet companies to help them fight the same computer-clogging spam he used to transmit.

The lawsuit settlements were reached quietly last month in U.S. District Court, although neither state officials nor Microsoft representatives have yet spoken publicly about them. Some details, however, were discovered this past week during a review of public files associated with the lawsuits, which invoked a new federal law intended to curb the flow of unsolicited spam that, by some estimates, accounts for 60 percent of all Internet e-mail traffic.

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Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060604/news_1n4spam.html

[Hawkeye-X]

1. The Usenet forum I subscribe to...

(net.admin.net-abuse.email) say that this is a total crap. Once a spammer stays a spammer.

[Fleshdancer]

2. does this seem excessive to anyone else?

a $1 million dollar fine for being an annoying asshole? Was he sending viruses or anything harmful? :shrug:

[NV Whino]

5. I read an article about this some time ago

in the NY Times. A $1 million is peanuts to these guys. They make a little bit on each e-mail they generate. At a million e-mails a day, that adds up fast.

The particular spammer I read about had it set up so the spam programs replicated themselves. His actual hands-on time was maybe an hour to get it started. The the spam replicated and spammed 24/7 while he collected the money.

[Hawkeye-X]

7. Try 1% to 3% of the leads generated

from spamming. That's still nickels and dimes to the spammers. I'd put the spammers in the same category as armed robbers or rapists, because they do rob AND rape you(r) resources.

[Hawkeye-X]

6. Spamming is a form of theft.

It uses up your bandwidth. Currently on my e-mail junk box, I have over 1,000 spam emails, and that's a 3 day period.

[elvisbear]

3. In an ironic twist.

Part of his sentence was to send out 10 million emails announcing that he was sorry about spamming and would never do it again. :sarcasm: :evilgrin:

[ikri]

4. 1 down, many to go

Now if they could just track down the spammers who created, I say created but they most probably paid someone else to create, the viruses containing SMTP facilities so they could spam from a network of IP addresses to hide their identities.

Fines aren't enough for these guys. Long prison sentences would be a start, being beaten to death with a rusty spoon would be a better way to deal with scum like these.

[Hawkeye-X]

8. Or a acid-laced 2x4.

tinlc.