First Arrest Made in U.S. For Spimming

prostoalex writes "U.S. federal authorities have conducted the first arrest for spimming. Eighteen-year-old Anthony Greco was arrested for sending spam to instant messenger users of MySpace.com." From the article: "Greco had allegedly threatened to share his methods for spamming members of the group if MySpace.com didn't sign an exclusive marketing deal that would have legitimized the messages he was sending via the service."

Comments

Arrested for spimming or extortion?

[Junior J. Junior III]

"Greco had allegedly threatened to share his methods for spamming members of the group if MySpace.com didn't sign an exclusive marketing deal that would have legitimized the messages he was sending via the service."

So, the spimmer isn't really under arrest for spimming, but for extortion. Right?

The real question

[SlayerofGods]

Is would anything have been done if he hadn't attempted to blackmail the company. I personally doubt it.

correct....

[JeanBaptiste]

I'd go one further though and call it blackmail. Which is one particular type of extortion, but I think its applicable in this case.

From lawguru.com:
---
EXTORTION n. obtaining money or property by threat to a victim's property or loved ones, intimidation, or false claim of a right (such as pretending to be an IRS agent). It is a felony in all states, except that a direct threat to harm the victim is usually treated as the crime of robbery. Blackmail is a form of extortion in which the threat is to expose embarrassing, damaging information to family, friends or the public.

BLACKMAIL n. the crime of threatening to reveal embarrassing, disgraceful or damaging facts (or rumors) about a person to the public, family, spouse or associates unless paid off to not carry out the threat. It is one form of extortion (which may include other threats such as physical harm or damage to property).

Work For Spam

[Rollsbot]

It's great that they finally nabbed a bad guy for spim (?). But why can't they do anything for all the spam in my inbox.

I haven't even gotten any SpIm but I can't see how it's anywhere near as bad as spam.

1) I don't store my IM's forever (I don't store them at all)
2) I don't accept IM's from strangers
3) IM's are synchronous. So, I won't turn on my computer to find 100 spims waiting for me.

First Arrest Made in U.S. For Spimming

[Eradicator2k3]

Was this guy dropped as a baby? I mean, how stupid do you have to be to blackmail a company, then agree to meet with "company execs" and NOT suspect that you're about to get arrested.

Did he honestly think he could get away with this? Uhmm, never mind. TFA explains that he did.

Spim is not MSN Messenger

[thundergeek]

Spim is sent to that crappy service that was put into windows 98, but not enabled by default. Was put into 2k, ME, and XP, and enabled by default.

It allows network messages to be sent via the Messenger Service.

I used to work at an ISP in my area, we got calls all the time with those "Your computer will reboot" pop ups. We walked the user through disabling the Messenger Service (Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services), then spent 5 minutes explaining that Messenger Service and MSN Messenger are two diferent programs. Finally, we wraped up the conversation by telling them to buy a firewall, or switch to our dsl service, and get a free router.

I now use Messenger Service at work to tell end users that I need to install patches, and to please call me when they are at their computer. The service doesn't allow two way conversations (unless you know the command line).

You can download programs that use this service, and even if the person DOES NOT have MSN Messenger, they will still get a pop up. Granted, they have to be exposed, or the firewall/router breached.

So, when you read the rest of these replies, remember that MSN and Messenger are two diferent things. You can't "Block" Messenger adds, or "Only allow friends" messages. mater of fact, there is NO gui for Messenger.

I think that if the company looks deaper, they will find that this guy wasn't using their IM service, but in fact was using a hole in the FW, and a service that is still active.

No, I don't think this company has seen the last of this exploit!

Later

Refrence

[TiggertheMad]

Yeah, you'd have to be stupid to be a maroon. Either that or mix red and purple and splash it on him.

Your quip was quite funny, but I think it might have been a cultural refrence, and not a typo. In old Warner-brothers cartoons, Bugs Bunny would say things like, 'What a iggit, what a maroon!' to insult people. I think the joke was that he didn't say 'idiot' and 'moron', but 'iggit' and 'maroon', words that only an iggit maroon would mispronounce. Either that, or I'm an iggit maroon who is missing the real joke. I'd lay odds at fifty-fifty either way.

(Dry, boring joke analysis over, you can wake up now.)