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Spammer Scott Levine Convicted

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the into-the-big-house dept.

bani writes "Spammer Scott Levine was convicted of massive data theft from Acxiom Corporation. Prosecutors say his company, the now-defunct Snipermail.com, stole 1.6 billion customer records from Acxiom and sold the data. He faces a maximum of 640 years in prison under the law, though he will likely be sentenced to far less. One spammer down, several million to go?"

4 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Not Millions by terrencefw · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the ROKSO list there's only really a hundred or so Levines and Richters out there. They are collectively responsible for a huge percentage of all the spam though. The rest is sent by amateur spammers sending to a few tens of thousands of people. The real spammers on the ROKSO list have databases of 1 billion + addresses.

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  2. "One spammer down, several million to go?" by ciscoguy01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "One spammer down, several million to go?"
    According to spamhaus only about 200 individuals are responsible for nearly all the spam in the world. I know that seems incredible but they are in a position to know.

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  3. Re:Sentence? Just Hit Delete! by drsquare · · Score: 3, Informative

    64,000 hours, at 8 hours a day, is 40000 days, or 218 years, so you're not too far off the 640-year mark.

    Your numbers are off. 64,000 hours at 16 hours a day is 4,000 days, or 11 years. That's a reasonable sentence. The work could be laying bricks in Siberia or digging irrigation ditches in the Sahara. Five minute water/food break at lunchtime. Perhaps a toilet break mid-afternoon.

  4. Re:Meanwhile... by 87C751 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Those relatively (!) few mails that reached actual people still wouldn't have caused them to lose 1 minute of their lives. How long does it take you to dismiss a mail as spam? Not more than a few seconds, maybe not even that.
    According to my procmail stats, my filters drop, on average, 43 spams a day. (which is a bit down from a year ago, thankfully) Those that do leak through take, on average, just over a minute to inspect the headers, possibly tune SpamAssassin and move the item to the spam-learning folder.

    From what I've read, I have it pretty easy. Many people get a lot more than 50 a day. The time loss goes up when you count the mental context switching. Without the filters, I'd lose about an hour a day. I bill clients $125/hr for doing real work. That's a loss of $45,625 in billable time per year. With the filters active, I only process about 7 a day, so I only lose around $5,300 in billables.

    Just trying to help in making a reasonable guess about the lost time due to him.
    Yeah, me too.
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