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Fired AOL Engineer gets 15 Months
n3hat writes "A former America Online software engineer was sentenced to 15 months in prison for stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers who sent out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mail messages, according to this A.P. story in the Baltimore Sun."
AOL still blows and we are amazed people still use it.
I know, I know... probably a flamebait rating but come on, you know you giggled!
Q: I am short, useless and provide no value. What am I? A: a sig
He has got just 1 second of jail per 175 emails.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Obligatory Family Guy joke: "Remember last week when you asked me to define irony and I said - urarghhh!" AOL personally kept me supplied with floppy disks during my school dayz, and many a cd coaster when I started working IT. These guys are the king of snail mail spam (virus(AOL8) laden cd's anyone :) and here this guy goes and follows their lead online, further screwing over the poor AOL customers. I love it.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Prisoner #1: So what're you in for?
Prisoner #2: Aggravated assault. You?
Prisoner #1: Armed robbery. How 'bout you?
AOL Engineer: I stole 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and sold them to spammers who sent out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mail messages.
Prisoners #1 and 2 inch away from AOL Engineer at the lunch table
AOL E-mail Data Thief Gets 15 Months in Prison
AP's Larry Neumeister reports that the AOL employee who sold 92 million stolen e-mail addresses and screen names to spammers has been sentenced to one year and three months in prison. Jason Smathers sold the list to spammers for $28,000, who then proceeded to send as many as 7 billion spam messages. The prosecutor in the case estimated 'AOL suffered a loss of 10 cents for every 1,000 spam e-mails sent to subscribers.' The judge suggested that Smathers pay $84,000 in restitution but will decide on the final figure after AOL files details of financial losses due to increased staff, hardware and software costs. An interesting note: Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in December that he canceled his AOL subscription because he received too much spam.
2005-08-17 21:42:32 AOL E-mail Data Thief Gets 15 Months in Prison (Index,Spam) (rejected)
How many years are AOL's management getting for... well, managing AOL.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I've never understood why non-violent criminals are even put into jail. Instead of us taxpayers paying about 25 grand a year for this guy(a number I pulled directly out of my ass, by the way); he should be forced to repay the damage that he has done. And, if it takes the rest of his life, then so be it; just don't let the guy declare bankruptcy (another thing I've never really understood).
Anyways, save jail for the murderers, rapists, and child molesters of the world. Make people like this guy, Martha Stewart, and Bernie Ebbers repay they're debt in other more productive ways.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I wonder how he stole them? And how long did it take for him to give them back? Did they ever find them?
of those 92 million, only about 2 million actually use aol mail... the rest are people who used up thier free trial and moved on.
I mean seriously, you expect me to believe that AOL has 92 million paying customers?
Honestly if I were a spammer, I'd only pay half price for AOL addresses, the odds of someone reading your email (especially after filtering) is nearly zero.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
"He's nothing but a low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worm! Hanging's too good for him. Burning's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!"
Indeed.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Kevin Mitnick prowls around some machines, steals nothing, damages nothing, yet spends four years in jail waiting for his trial, gets a five year sentence, and has to stay away from computers for another few years, while this fucknuts steals a subscriber list for spammers and gets a slap on the wrist? Doesn't even have to stay away from other people's mail servers? Riiight.
All in the name of poetic justice.
Fight Spammers!
Does anybody actually know the charge he was convicted of? I looked at the article and it mentioned pleas and taking "stolen property" across state lines, and CAN-SPAM, but none of these were clear as to what he was actually convicted of.
Anybody?
"You've Got Jail !"
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
He's NOT that cute.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
He better pray for solitary confinement. Bubba and his posse are all fiercely loyal AOL users and they don't NEED no \/i@GR@ or Ci@li5.
what's the point in selling 92 million email address? any dictionary attack worth it's weight will have found 80%+ of those accounts anyway... with 92 million of these suckers, any @ aol.com will almost certainly come up with a match, or at least a partial match.
I mean he stole a ton of personal info and stuff.
There are a lot of hardcore hackers that got a ton more time than that.
Tell me what you think?
ACK
From what I understand, there are several robot programs that go through AOL chat rooms and suck down screen names for use in spam operations. I would suspect that that technique is:
- more effective, since all of the addresses you gather are known good
- cheaper, since you can get millions of addresses a week then cancel your free trial
- less risky
A spammer that pays that kind of money for such a seemingly worthless list of stolen addresses should look for another line of work.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Cost in dolars delete spam from your AOL account: $5
Cost to have CompUSSR repair your PC from spyware: $150
The look on the spammer's face as he see "Bubba" get a penis enlargement spam: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's KARMA!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Have to wonder...Will he end up like that Russian Spammer? Murdered :)
I must say, that fate should befall all spammers...
The most I've ever got from AOL was 1 month free.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
If you read TFA you'll see that the AOLer got off easy because he pleaded guilty very early on. In contrast this Kevin Mitnick nitwit is even now trying to play the victim and not really sounding contrite about it.
Take a look at his photo so you'll know what I mean....
Best Buy can have you arrested
It all comes down to fear. People fear "hackers", and so hackers get tougher sentences.
Everyone understands the notion of an employee stealing personal information from their company. On the other hand, the average
American has no clue how hardcore hackers do what they do, or what they are capable of and so naturally hackers are feared. They are the "boogey man" of technology.
OK - no chance of the government being that smart... but it would be nice.
And most of the people with titles like "software engineer" put just as much time, effort, and money into getting their computer science degrees.
I'll take "software engineer" off my business card as soon as I see engineering professors stop referring to themselves as "Dr.".
Why don't we put this clown in the stocks in the public square of his hometown, and let anyone who's received a spam from his customers slap him upside the head?
Sure, it might result in a fatal concussion sometime around the fourth of fifth hour of people lining up to smack him, but them's the breaks.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, hilarious. He desereved to be gang raped and/or forced to perform sexual favors for his crime that physicall harmed no one.
Also I guess I missed where the judge included "rape" in the 15 month jail sentence.
Internet tough guys, huh?
The article just says "conspiracy", which is pretty vague. I suspect that it means "conspiracy to commit fraud", 18 USC 371, punishable by up to 5 years.
You've got jail!
Don't stow thrones in grass houses.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
" If I had to go to jail for a cybercrime, I would at least want the other inmates to understand the charge."
The public at large may not be experts in some of the more sophisticated crimes, nor in the finer points of intellectual property (e.g., as applied to those database records), but stuff like spam is something you don't need a Ph.D. in CS to understand. If someone doesn't understand, someone else will explain it to them.
Spammer: "I sold 92 million AOL email addresses to spammers."
Bubba: "Uh, wot's a spammer"
Billy Joe: "Bubba, you know those 'enlarge your penis' and 'horny teens waiting for you' messages you told me your little daughter was getting on AOL? This guy told them where to send those."
Which way it goes from there, I wouldn't know. But from there Bubba understands exactly what the cybercrime was.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What makes it not an engineering degree?
I have a BSCS from an engineering school. At an engineering school, the curriculum is basically the same for all students up to junior year. For instance, I took the same science and math courses as the rest of the engineering students. I had to take the same number of science courses as the EEs, and more math courses than the EEs. Some of the more advanced courses are also the same for CS as they are for EE, so some of the courses I took were also EE courses and taught by EE professors. I was, of course, required to take a course in software engineering. In addition, I also had to take a course on the social implications of software engineering, which is something the other engineering disciplines did not have a course comparable to.
So why is my degree not an engineering degree?
I still don't call myself an engineer. Back off man, I'm a scientist.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
They take common names and add three-digit or more extensions just as many acutal AOL users select their names. Start with ann001@aol.com (would anyone used ann000?) through ann999, bill001 thru bill999, to walt001 through walt999, and you can get a bunch of names there. Don't even bother with the bounces, have reply-to point to (poor) ann001. This is not efficient, probably most will bounce, but spammers don't care, especially when the sending bandwidth being abused is some foreign open server.
Tag lost or not installed.
Press enter please
He plead guilty and expressed believable remorse for his actions. That's the whole difference. Like it or not, that's how our system works.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
And most of the people with titles like "software engineer" put just as much time, effort, and money into getting their computer science degrees.
And I put just as much time, effort and money into getting my physics degree, but that doesn't make me an engineer. I have friends who similarly invested in their arts degrees - would you call them engineers?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I've been sentenced for a D.U.I. offense. My 3rd one. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I'm a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to 5 black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again. One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segragation though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lockdown. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, He suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I've requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He also said there was no where to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things . . . . I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking to hard on all this . . . . I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for.
-A letter to Human Rights Watch
Prison rape is funny again, guys!
... we already have that system. You may notice that stuff like getting a different sentence for pleading guilty or cooperating with justice aren't new to this case. That's how the RL system works, and is supposed to work.
There is no such thing as purely objective justice, where the sentence is just spat out based on a formula. (Just feed the crime in, have a computer churn a few seconds, spit out the exact number of days in jail.) It's not even supposed to work that way.
As for who picks the nitwits, that's the judge. There's a reason laws give him/her a very broad interval and let him/her decide where in that interval you fit.
The job of justice isn't just to dish out punishment, but to hopefully reduce crime. And not just from a theoretical humanitarian point of view. There just isn't place in prisons to give maximum sentence to everyone. It's a limited resource, and you have to decide how much of it is _needed_ to help keep crime down.
So a judge's job _is_ to decide, among other things, what the risks are of you doing it again if he/she let you go.
If you've spent _years_ doing the same kind of crime, and still maintain that it was within your rights to do so and it's the victim's fault if their front door lock could be lockpicked (or their network could be broken into)... you've just convinced him/her that if you were let go, you'd run do the same.
So, yes, the moral of the story is: if you're a twit with the judge, he _is_ entitled to have the last laugh. That guy/gal isn't the enemy, and may well even be looking for an excuse to give you community service or a fine instead. (Like he suggested in this case at one point.) But if you tell him basically "bah, they deserved having their house/network/whatever burglarized, and you guys are victimizing me by trying to keep me from doing it again", congrats, you've just shot yourself in the foot.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://dis.4chan.org/read.php/dis/1124400519/1-40
Deus est fatalis
... this is in reference to Alice's Restaurant.
"Thank you. Please spellcheck your genitalia references though.
Actually, a better alternative would be to sentence him to sending apologies to all of the people whose addresses he stole.
By hand. One at a time.
If courts started making spammers do this instead, it'd be a much better deterrent than jail, and it would much better fit the crime.
Why is it that people think a distributed crime is any less of a crime? Do you think it'd be OK if he stole $130,000 from a bank? Then why do you think it's OK that he stole $0.0019 each (1 second's wages at $6.75/hr) from 70 million people? They work out to the same amount of money.
I'll kindly point your attention to one of the definitions you yourself have highlighted: " 1. The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems. "
You may notice certain words in there like "scientific" or "mathematical". So, sad to say, an ex-burger-flipper who faked a resume and copies-and-pastes from tutorials he doesn't even _understand_, doesn't fit that definition any way you want to stretch it.
I've worked with people who know their trade and spent two decades learning to do a solid engineering job even without a university degree, yes. But the vast majority of ex-burger-flippers turned VB "engineers" just because it paid better, nope, sorry, are not doing anything even _vaguely_ resembling engineering. (Software or otherwise.)
The vast majority don't even understand the most elementary _basics_ of the science or mathematics behind it. And show no sign of even trying to learn. They'll just do a copy-and-paste job (sometimes via memory, but copy-and-paste job nevertheless) from some tutorial they've seen somewhere, without even understanding what or why happened there.
I fondly call it "cargo cult programming."
The story behind "cargo cults" is that in WW2 airplanes dropped food and supplies on various islands to support their troops there. A lot missed the mark and were found by natives instead. Who never understood what happened there, but some proceeded to pray to the mysterious metal birds to come drop more stuff. And when that didn't happen, they carved statues of airplanes and prayed to them some more.
Well, that's the kind of code I see every day. Code written by someone who never even understood wtf _is_ a factory, or a singleton, or whatever (and much less _mathematical_ stuff like why an algorithm is "O(n*log n)" and another is "O(n*n)" and why the heck that matters. Or even what that funny "O" notation means.) But they proceeded to dutifully make their own mental cult around them, and carve statues to those all over the code.
For bonus points, when the statue they carve isn't even of a pattern that makes sense. Nah, it's of some stupid "optimization" that actually worked only in Java 1.0 or only with a very specific C compiler on some obscure platform, and only under very specific circumstances. But they never understood all that, so they'll faithfully carve statues of it all over the place, in the _awfully_ wrong places.
If that's applying scientific or mathematical principles... eh, I rest my case.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I know everyone loves that Steve Jobs quote about decreasing boot time*, and I know a distributed crime is still a crime, and I figure that white-collar criminals are probably the group of lawbreakers most likely to be swayed by 'examples' of horribly disproportionate punishments for crimes --
but to claim that being violently raped, repeatedly, is an acceptable repayment to society for any crime, is a sign that some people here need to unplug a bit. If you get more bent out of shape over spam than large scale violence against fellow people, no matter what laws or social boundaries they've crossed, then I sincerely hope I am never on the recieving end of your decision-making process. It's just junk mail. Yeah, it sucks; but if someone gave a nation the choice between everyone receiving junk mail every day, or having a specific individual gang raped, I should hope the nation would be enlightened enough to deal with the stupid colored pamphlets.
For the love of all that's right, end prison rape.
* It goes something like "It's my moral responsiblity to decrease the Mac's boot time, because if I shave ten seconds off, and have 5 million users, and they each use their Macs for so many years, I'll have saved fifty lives". Uncle Google is failing me right now...
From AOL TV commercial: "To say thanks, I baked you this apple crumb cake!"
Who thinks this guy should only eat apple crumb cake for the next 15 months, say aye!
Yes I am.
Best Buy can have you arrested
But they didn't get Heather Robinson, the former AOL staffer who stole celebrities' screen names and worked those "newly found contacts" into various movie deals.
One is a criminal; the other is an "up and coming screenwriter". Obviously there is no consistency in how AOL deals with employee violations.