A Drop In The Ocean
Australian authorities are investigating a man over his alleged involvement in an operation that sent over 2 billion spam emails in a single year, most promoting Viagra. Dutch authorities tipped off the Australians after discovering that the man had rented 35 servers from a company in the Netherlands for no other purpose than to pump out the spam, day in, day out. But the 2 billion spam emails barely scratches the surface of the problem.
Experts say that's a drop in the ocean compared to the number of spam e-mails sent globally each year, and the system he used probably wasn't very sophisticated.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority began investigating the man, whose identity was not immediately released, after receiving a tip-off from authorities in the Netherlands in May last year.
Danyel Molenaar, a project manager for the Dutch Independent Regulator of Post and Telecommunications, said the man had rented 35 servers for around 14,000 Australian dollars (US$10,493; euro8,256) each per month from a small Internet service provider in the Netherlands to carry out the alleged spam campaign.
"These 35 servers were used just for sending spam day-in, day-out for at least a year, probably longer," Molenaar said Wednesday. "This operation probably sent out billions and billions of e-mails."
Australia has some of the toughest laws in the world against spamming, the notoriously hard-to-stop practice of flooding as many inboxes as possible with unwanted sales messages in the hope some of the receivers will reply.
Under Australia's Spam Act of 2003, it is illegal for Australian residents to be involved in the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mails, even if they are generated from outside the country.
If the man is found guilty of violating the anti-spamming law, he could be fined quite a large sum of money. I'd suggest a more fitting punishment, however. Print out the 2 billion spam emails.
And make him eat them.
Geek Stuff, World news | Gaius Wednesday, 13 September , 2006
By Blackhawk, Wednesday, 13 September , 2006 @ 8:05 am
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam.
It’s not got much spam in it.
On second thought, that looks like my gmail account…