MySpace wins massive spam payout

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 14 May 2008 at 11:44

MySpace has won a record $234 million payout against an organisation which spammed members of the social networking site.

The award was handed to MySpace after the men behind the spam, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, failed to turn up for the Los Angeles district court hearing. Wallace was known as the "spam king" and it's believed that during the nineties he was sending out around 30 million pieces of spam every day.

The MySpace scam involved the spammers either creating their own accounts or stealing the passwords of others through phishing scams. They would then use these accounts to email other members with links to "cool sites", which inevitably were trying to sell something or make money on hits.

According to MySpace the spammers sent 735,925 messages to its members, some of which linked to pornographic sites.

MySpace believes the judgement will set an example for other spammers trying to exploit the social networking site: "Anybody who's been thinking about engaging in spam is going to say, 'Wow, I better not go there,'" MySpace's chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam tells the AP. "Spammers don't want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It's our job to send a message to stop them."

However, that statement appears naïve considering that Wallace and Rines already have existing anti-spam judgements against them, following suits from AOL and other leading service providers. In the past the two men have simply disappeared, before opening a new spam company elsewhere in the country.