Mad-as-hell MySpace sues phishy spammer
By John Pospisil
MySpace.com has commenced legal action against one of the Internet’s most notorious spammers, Scott Richter.
Planning to spam MySpace? Think again
MySpace alleges that Richter sent millions of promotional “bulletins” from MySpace users’ accounts without their permission.
The legal suit was filed in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, and alleges that between July and December 2006, Richter and his associates arranged for millions of spam “bulletins” to be sent from MySpace users’ accounts without their knowledge.
MySpace alleges that Richter either phished MySpace accounts himself or acquired a list of phished accounts to launch spam campaigns for products such as ringtones and polo shirts.
MySpace seeks a permanent injunction barring Richter and his affiliated companies from its web site in addition to unspecified monetary damages.
This action is part of an MySpace initiative to combat spam, phishing and other abuse.
“We’re committed to protecting our community from phishing and spam,” said Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer for MySpace.
“If it takes filing a federal suit to stop someone who violates the law and damages our members’ experience, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Richter has previously been successfully sued by Microsoft for spamming. He had to cough up $7 million in that case, but that obviously that wasn’t enough to encourage Richter to change his ways. There must be a lot of money in spam!
Spam must be one of the most annoying forms of pollution on the planet, whether it’s MySpace spam, or just plain email spam.
While action against spammers like Richter is commendable, and hopefully dissuades other would-be spammers from joining the profession (and I use that term very loosely), it will ultimately do very little to stem the tidal wave of spam that we all seem to receive on a daily basis, as a lot of spam originates in countries where the legal system turns a blind eye to spamming. For this reason I suspect that spam will be with us for some time yet: “Build a better spam trap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”
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