Haha! MySpace spammers fined $230 million!

[flvegan]

A team of notorious American internet spammers has been fined a record $230m for bombarding MySpace users with adverts for pornography and gambling websites.

"Spam king" Sanford Wallace, along with his business partner Walter Rines, were yesterday ordered to pay unprecedented damages to the social networking website – amounting to the strongest punishment ever handed out to a spammer in the US.

A court in Los Angeles heard how Wallace and Rines sent more than 700,000 messages to MySpace users, fooling them into visiting gambling sites or adult-rated pages. Disguised as comments from the user's friends, the notes in fact contained advertisements that made the pair a small fee every time somebody was fooled into clicking on them.

Although evidence suggested that the pair made around $500,000 from their activities, district judge Audrey Collins used the terms of America's CAN-SPAM Act – which can levy up to $300 for each infringement of the law.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/14/myspace.spam

I don't have a MySpace page, but I hate spammers.

[hiaasenrocks]

1. I had one. Well I still do but I don't go there anymore and

I took everything off my page. It was just too annoying. So now I just email friends and keep up with my blog. I hate spam.

[DarkTirade]

2. Fecking awesome.

The reason spam is so prevalent is because it's straight profit. Most of the time it doesn't cost them ANYTHING to send it. Junk mail costs a stamp. But spam is free.