MySpace wins record payout from 'spam king'

MySpace has won a £165 million judgment against a notorious "spam king" over junk messages sent to its members.

In what is believed to the largest ever anti-spam award, a federal judge in Los Angeles found against Sanford Wallace, and his partner, Walter Rines, after the two failed to attend a court hearing, said MySpace.

Wallace earned the nicknames "Spam King" and "Spamford" while running a company that sent as many as 30 million junk emails a day in the 1990s.

He left that company, Cyber Promotions, after being sued by several internet service providers including AOL. But he re-emerged in a spyware case that led to a £2.05 million federal judgment against him in 2006.

The court judgment was hailed by MySpace as a "landmark" ruling. But industry experts said it was more important for its deterrent value as it was very unlikely that the social networking website would ever collect the money.

Multi-million-dollar awards have been made against spammers in the past but finding the culprits is often difficult.

MySpace said Rines and Wallace created their own MySpace accounts or took over existing ones by stealing passwords.

Hemanshu Nigam, the company’s security chief, said the pair then emailed other MySpace members "asking them to check out a cool video or another cool site".

He added: "When you [got] there, they were making money trying to sell you something or making money based on hits or trying to sell ring tones."

MySpace said the pair sent more than 730,000 messages to MySpace members, many made to look like they were coming from trusted friends, giving them an air of legitimacy.



Telegraph.co.uk

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Thats incredible :s

Thank you for sharing with us

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It`s just a pity more spammers and caught and dealt with though.

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That is some amazing payout for myspace. I know this article is a bit old but I didn't know they reached that settlement and made some money. I'm glad that they won it against the spammers because spamming was getting out of control.

I believe my daughter has bought some ring tones from these spammers...

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Good news. So spammers, stop spamming!