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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/
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..?
"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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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!