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Spammer Scott Levine Convicted
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?"
Only give him 1/10th of the maximum.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
They should put him in prison and make him write out every e-mail he ever sent with a pencil and paper. He gets out of jail whenever he is finished.
From TFA:
"We're very pleased with the outcome. We think it's the appropriate verdict," U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins said outside U.S. District Court.
As much as I dislike spammers, is 640 years appropriate for one man? He didn't even kill anyone. Maybe he should have gotten something more brutal, like 64000 hours of community service...as a tech support operator!
Every spammer that goes to jail for his actions is a victory. For one, it's quite well-known that most of the spam we see today originates from a relatively small group of people, so it's not exactly "one down, several more million to go"; and also, even if there were considerably more, the mere fact that they now know that they might go to jail for spamming just might be a deterrent. Spamming is pretty much a textbook example of whitecollar crime, and it's been shown that unlike with bluecollar crime (that is, more physical crimes, like assault, rape, robbery etc.), prison sentences actually do serve as a deterrent here.
Remember, spammers are cowards - and greedy cowards, for that matter. They do what they do to get rich quick, so the prospect losing their money in lawsuits and possibly going to jail afterwards will scare them quite a bit.
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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.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
"640 years should be enough for anyone"
Stealing is not exclusively defined as depriving someone else of something that belongs to them.
Most children know that stealing is taking something that does not belong to you, regardless of whether it is a copy or the original item.
Stealing has a lot to do with intent as well. If I take the wrong coat at a restaurant, I deprived it from someone else, but I didn't have the intent to do so, so it isn't stealing.
Besides, even by your deifinition, it IS stealing. The records were private, once they were copied, the company was deprived of its secrecy/privacy of those records. Same as stealing a password.
-David
1. A good start.
2. Not nearly enough.
3. What's wrong with a firing squad?
4. You mean those Pen1s En1argement Pi11s don't work???
The problem is, that most spammers are seen in the 'industry' (so to speak) as some of the best paid, their earnings from the illegal mailings dwarf what some porn websites make in a day, and that can be huge
As long as their is money in it, people will try their hardest to do it. It will be very hard to stop in the end, as for every spammer who goes down... 10 new kids with a copy of a mailing script pop up.
What would be better is taking down the companies who fund the illegal mail by paying comissions on the products advertised, no spammer would risk jail if they weren't getting paid.
Business Voyeur
He didn't? Let's assume (conservatively), that he sent out one spam per customer record he stole. 1.6 billion spams. Let's further assume that it takes a human being one second to "Just Hit Delete". 1.6 billion person-seconds wasted. 444,444 person-hours wasted. 18,518 person-days wasted. 50 person-years if you're working 24/7. At 8 hours a day, that's the entire productive lifespan of three people. Three lives - stolen just as effectively as if he'd killed them.
> Maybe he should have gotten something more brutal, like 64000 hours of community service...as a tech support operator!
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.
640 years ought to be enough for anybody, but what I'd really like to see is to have him locked in a cell, "Just Hitting Delete", once for every spam he sent, for 16 waking hours a day.
Four or five times a day, an email with a From: line like "Your Warden", "Health Services", or "Cafeteria" with a Subject: line such as "Extended recreation hours!", "Take a break!", or "Lunchtime!" will appear.
He has to reply to this mail to get an hour of exercise, have his medical checkups, or his meals.
Hey, it's just spam, right? Doesn't hurt anyone, right? Just delete it, right? Well, if he hasn't starved to death when he runs out of 1.6 billion spams on which to Just Hit Delete, he can walk away a free man.
So Acxiom lost 1.6 billion private records... what were they charged with for such shoddy security?
How much did they pay consumers for not protecting their data..?
What new standards did they have to agree to with the government..?
From what i can tell, he is being jailed for THEFT, not spam.
While i agree with most here that spam sux, there is a difference between being convicted of spamming and convicted of being a common thief.
So dont get too happy yet shouting 'spammers are toast'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"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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"One spammer down, several million to go?"
I heard that less than 200 people account for about 95% of all spam.
So the difference here is that one person has the ability to disturb the whole infrastructure fo the economy, and waste a lot of time and money.
As bad as they are, a violent criminal only disturbs a small segment of society.
So a data 'thief' is like a lawn mower and a violent criminal is like an ant eater.
Hello Cruel World
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.
If you can steal a thousand people's credit card numbers and then use that information to commit fraud, you have committed a thousand crimes. If you can cause $100 billion in damage, then guess what, you're liable for the $100 billion. Fraud and theft are crimes, and the more people you steal from (regardless of the means), the more you get punished.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
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.
Yeah, me too.Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Can we get his cellmate's names and addresses? I would like to send his cellmate's some penis enlargment pills and cialis softtabs.
Fight Spammers!
All she was charged with was lying to protect herself. She was set up just like the victims of AbScam and just like John Delorean. Entrapment, pure and simple.
Lying to investigators is not entrapment, it is obstruction of justice.