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68-449: Mydoom appears to have been commissioned by e-mail spammers to send junk e-mail through infected computers. The worm contains the text message "Andy; I'm just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry," leading many to believe that the worm's creator was paid. Early on, several security firms expressed their belief that the worm originated from a programmer in Russia. The actual author of the worm

136-444: A television station or cable network . VoIP spam is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) spam, usually using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) . This is nearly identical to telemarketing calls over traditional phone lines. When the user chooses to receive the spam call, a pre-recorded spam message or advertisement is usually played back. This is generally easier for the spammer as VoIP services are cheap and easy to anonymize over

204-557: A case in a federal court against the operator of a small Oklahoma-based Internet service provider who accused him of spamming. U.S. Judge Ralph G. Thompson granted a motion by plaintiff Robert Braver for a default judgment and permanent injunction against him. The judgment includes a statutory damages award of about $ 10 million under Oklahoma law. In June 2007, two men were convicted of eight counts stemming from sending millions of e-mail spam messages that included hardcore pornographic images. Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California

272-427: A cheese product ), but this term did not persist. In the late 19th century, Western Union allowed telegraphic messages on its network to be sent to multiple destinations. The first recorded instance of a mass unsolicited commercial telegram is from May 1864, when some British politicians received an unsolicited telegram advertising a dentist. The earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined )

340-405: A flood of traffic. Trade press conjecture, spurred on by SCO Group's own claims, held that this meant the worm was created by a Linux or open source supporter in retaliation for SCO Group's controversial legal actions and public statements against Linux. This theory was rejected immediately by security researchers. Since then, it has been likewise rejected by law enforcement agents investigating

408-460: A huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen. In early chat-room services like PeopleLink and the early days of Online America (later known as America Online or AOL), they actually flooded the screen with quotes from the Monty Python sketch. This was used as a tactic by insiders of a group that wanted to drive newcomers out of the room so the usual conversation could continue. It

476-453: A large number of spam accounts began simultaneously posting links to a website, causing ‘ajobwithgoogle’ to trend. User-submitted comments that contain swear words or slurs are classified as profanity. Common techniques to circumvent censorship include “cloaking”, which works by using symbols and numbers in place of letters or inserting punctuation inside the word (for example, "w.o.r.d.s" instead of "words"). The words are still recognizable by

544-412: A link to a supposed keygen , trainer, ISO file for a video game , or something similar. The actual content of the video ends up being totally unrelated, a Rickroll , offensive, or simply on-screen text of a link to the site being promoted. In some cases, the link in question may lead to an online survey site, a password-protected archive file with instructions leading to the aforementioned survey (though

612-436: A lot of harm before finally realizing that the business is not profitable. Some companies and groups "rank" spammers; spammers who make the news are sometimes referred to by these rankings. In all cases listed above, including both commercial and non-commercial, "spam happens" because of a positive cost–benefit analysis result; if the cost to recipients is excluded as an externality the spammer can avoid paying. Cost

680-400: A new target – the social web . Over 90% of social network users have experienced social spam in some form. Those doing the “spamming” can be automated spambots / social bots , fake accounts, or real people. Social spammers often capitalize on breaking news stories to plant malicious links or dominate the comment sections of websites with disruptive or offensive content. Social spam is on

748-432: A person or group. In September 2012, Eric Yee was arrested for making threats in an ESPN comment section. He started out discussing the high price of LeBron James shoes, but quickly turned into a stream of racist and insulting comments, and threats against children. This is a more serious example of social spam. User-submitted hate speech is a comment that contains strongly offensive content directed against people of

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816-403: A prank by participants in multi-user dungeon games, to fill their rivals' accounts with unwanted electronic junk. The first major commercial spam incident started on March 5, 1994, when a husband and wife team of lawyers, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel , began using bulk Usenet posting to advertise immigration law services. The incident was commonly termed the " Green Card spam", after

884-485: A problem when the Internet was opened for commercial use in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and by 2007 it constituted about 80% to 85% of all e-mail, by a conservative estimate. Pressure to make email spam illegal has resulted in legislation in some jurisdictions, but less so in others. The efforts taken by governing bodies, security systems and email service providers seem to be helping to reduce

952-591: A product or service from users that never actually used it, and therefore insincere or misleading. These are often solicited by the proprietor of the product or service, who contracts positive reviews, known as “reviews-for-hire”. Some companies are attempting to tackle this problem by warning users that not all reviews are genuine. Fake friends occurs when several fake accounts connect or become “friends”. These users or spambots often try to gain credibility by following verified accounts, such as those for popular celebrities and public figures. If that account owner follows

1020-841: A result do not have any specific functionality or a meaningful description; (ii) multiple instances of the same app being published to obtain increased visibility in the app market; and (iii) apps that make excessive use of unrelated keywords to attract users through unintended searches. Bluespam, or the action of sending spam to Bluetooth -enabled devices, is another form of spam that has developed in recent years. E-mail and other forms of spamming have been used for purposes other than advertisements. Many early Usenet spams were religious or political. Serdar Argic , for instance, spammed Usenet with historical revisionist screeds. A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages. A growing number of criminals are also using spam to perpetrate various sorts of fraud. In 2011

1088-548: A specific race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. According to a Council of Europe survey, across the European Union, 78% of respondents had encountered hate speech online; 40% felt personally attacked or threatened; and 1 in 20 have posted hate speech themselves. User-submitted comments can include malicious links that will inappropriately harm, mislead, or otherwise damage a user or computer. These links are most commonly found on video entertainment sites, such as YouTube . When

1156-420: A sufficient conversion rate to keep the spamming alive. Furthermore, even though spam appears not to be economically viable as a way for a reputable company to do business, it suffices for professional spammers to convince a tiny proportion of gullible advertisers that it is viable for those spammers to stay in business. Finally, new spammers go into business every day, and the low costs allow a single spammer to do

1224-486: A user are broadcast to all followers of the user. Spammers, out of malicious intent, post either unwanted (or irrelevant) information or spread misinformation on social media platforms. Spreading beyond the centrally managed social networking platforms, user-generated content increasingly appears on business, government, and nonprofit websites worldwide. Fake accounts and comments planted by computers programmed to issue social spam can infiltrate these websites. Blog spam

1292-451: A user clicks on a malicious link, the result can include downloading malware to the user's device, directing the user to sites designed to steal personal information, drawing unaware users into participating in concealed advertising campaigns, and other harmful consequences. Malware can be very dangerous to the user, and can manifest in several forms: viruses, worms, spyware , Trojan horses , or adware . Fraudulent reviews are reviews of

1360-506: A waitress reading out a menu where every item but one includes the Spam canned luncheon meat. As the waitress recites the Spam-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drown out all conversations with a song, repeating "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam… Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!". In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs , who would repeat "Spam"

1428-556: Is a common approach in social networking spam such as that generated by the social networking site Quechup . Instant messaging spam makes use of instant messaging systems. Although less prevalent than its e-mail counterpart, according to a report from Ferris Research, 500 million spam IMs were sent in 2003, twice the level of 2002. Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups. Spamming of Usenet newsgroups actually pre-dates e-mail spam. Usenet convention defines spamming as excessive multiple posting, that is,

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1496-498: Is named after Spam , a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly. Spamming remains economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, servers, infrastructures, IP ranges, and domain names, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by

1564-718: Is primarily transmitted via e-mail , appearing as a transmission error, with subject lines including "Error", "Mail Delivery System", "Test" or "Mail Transaction Failed" in different languages, including English and French. The mail contains an attachment that, if executed , resends the worm to e-mail addresses found in local files such as a user's address book. It also copies itself to the "shared folder" of peer-to-peer file sharing application Kazaa in an attempt to spread that way. Mydoom avoids targeting e-mail addresses at certain universities, such as Rutgers , MIT , Stanford and UC Berkeley , as well as certain companies such as Microsoft and Symantec . Some early reports claimed

1632-421: Is spamming on weblogs . In 2003, this type of spam took advantage of the open nature of comments in the blogging software Movable Type by repeatedly placing comments to various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site. Similar attacks are often performed against wikis and guestbooks , both of which accept user contributions. Another possible form of spam in blogs

1700-460: Is that search engine indexes are inundated with useless pages, increasing the cost of each processed query". The costs of spam also include the collateral costs of the struggle between spammers and the administrators and users of the media threatened by spamming. Email spam exemplifies a tragedy of the commons : spammers use resources (both physical and human), without bearing the entire cost of those resources. In fact, spammers commonly do not bear

1768-484: Is the combination of: Benefit is the total expected profit from spam, which may include any combination of the commercial and non-commercial reasons listed above. It is normally linear, based on the incremental benefit of reaching each additional spam recipient, combined with the conversion rate . The conversion rate for botnet -generated spam has recently been measured to be around one in 12,000,000 for pharmaceutical spam and one in 200,000 for infection sites as used by

1836-481: Is the first case in which US prosecutors used identity theft laws to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name. In an attempt to assess potential legal and technical strategies for stopping illegal spam, a study cataloged three months of online spam data and researched website naming and hosting infrastructures. The study concluded that: 1) half of all spam programs have their domains and servers distributed over just eight percent or fewer of

1904-475: Is the spamming of a certain tag on websites such as Tumblr. In actual video spam, the uploaded video is given a name and description with a popular figure or event that is likely to draw attention, or within the video a certain image is timed to come up as the video's thumbnail image to mislead the viewer, such as a still image from a feature film, purporting to be a part-by-part piece of a movie being pirated, e.g. Big Buck Bunny Full Movie Online - Part 1/10 HD ,

1972-721: Is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages ( spam ) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising , non-commercial proselytizing , or any prohibited purpose (especially phishing ), or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam , the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam , Usenet newsgroup spam , Web search engine spam , spam in blogs , wiki spam , online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam , Internet forum spam , junk fax transmissions , social spam , spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It

2040-530: Is their use in filtering the mail of users who are not informed of their use that draws fire. Even though it is possible in some jurisdictions to treat some spam as unlawful merely by applying existing laws against trespass and conversion , some laws specifically targeting spam have been proposed. In 2004, United States passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that provided ISPs with tools to combat spam. This act allowed Yahoo! to successfully sue Eric Head who settled

2108-447: Is unknown. The worm appeared to be a poorly sent e-mail, and most people who originally were e-mailed the worm ignored it, thinking it was spam. However, it eventually spread to infect at least 500 thousand computers across the globe. Speculative early coverage held that the sole purpose of the worm was to perpetrate a distributed denial-of-service attack against SCO Group . 25 percent of Mydoom.A-infected hosts targeted SCO Group with

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2176-490: The American Civil Liberties Union has to do with so-called "stealth blocking", a term for ISPs employing aggressive spam blocking without their users' knowledge. These groups' concern is that ISPs or technicians seeking to reduce spam-related costs may select tools that (either through error or design) also block non-spam e-mail from sites seen as "spam-friendly". Few object to the existence of these tools; it

2244-522: The Bosnian War . However, as it was a violation of their terms of service, the ISP Panix deleted all of the bulk posts from Usenet, only missing three copies . Within a few years, the focus of spamming (and anti-spam efforts) moved chiefly to email, where it remains today. By 1999, Khan C. Smith, a well known hacker at the time, had begun to commercialize the bulk email industry and rallied thousands into

2312-476: The Storm botnet . The authors of the study calculating those conversion rates noted, "After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted." Spam can be used to spread computer viruses , trojan horses or other malicious software. The objective may be identity theft , or worse (e.g., advance fee fraud ). Some spam attempts to capitalize on human greed, while some attempts to take advantage of

2380-483: The University of California, Berkeley and OvGU demonstrated that most (web-based) academic search engines, especially Google Scholar are not capable of identifying spam attacks. The researchers manipulated the citation counts of articles, and managed to make Google Scholar index complete fake articles, some containing advertising. Spamming in mobile app stores include (i) apps that were automatically generated and as

2448-424: The Internet, and there are many options for sending mass number of calls from a single location. Accounts or IP addresses being used for VoIP spam can usually be identified by a large number of outgoing calls, low call completion and short call length. Academic search engines enable researchers to find academic literature and are used to obtain citation data for calculating author-level metrics . Researchers from

2516-437: The additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem. Spam's direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages. Large companies who are frequent spam targets utilize numerous techniques to detect and prevent spam. The cost to providers of search engines is significant: "The secondary consequence of spamming

2584-634: The business by building more friendly bulk email software and providing internet access illegally hacked from major ISPs such as Earthlink and Botnets. By 2009 the majority of spam sent around the World was in the English language ; spammers began using automatic translation services to send spam in other languages. Email spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE), or junk mail, is the practice of sending unwanted email messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities. Spam in email started to become

2652-402: The cost at all. This raises the costs for everyone. In some ways spam is even a potential threat to the entire email system, as operated in the past. Since email is so cheap to send, a tiny number of spammers can saturate the Internet with junk mail. Although only a tiny percentage of their targets are motivated to purchase their products (or fall victim to their scams), the low cost may provide

2720-766: The costs of investigation by the state of Florida , and a $ 1.1 million penalty if spamming were to continue, the $ 50,000 was not paid, or the financial statements provided were found to be inaccurate. The spamming operation was successfully shut down. Social spam Social spam is unwanted spam content appearing on social networking services , social bookmarking sites, and any website with user-generated content (comments, chat, etc.). It can be manifested in many ways, including bulk messages, profanity , insults , hate speech , malicious links, fraudulent reviews, fake friends, and personally identifiable information . As email spam filters became more effective, catching over 95% of these messages, spammers have moved to

2788-424: The guise of a user's trusted contacts such as friends and family. As for Twitter, spammers gain credibility by following verified accounts such as that of Lady Gaga; when that account owner follows the spammer back, it legitimizes the spammer. Twitter has studied what interest structures allow their users to receive interesting tweets and avoid spam, despite the site using the broadcast model, in which all tweets from

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2856-649: The human eye, though are often missed by website monitors due to the misspelling. User-submitted insults are comments that contain mildly or strongly insulting language against a specific person or persons. These comments range from mild name-calling to severe bullying . Online bullies often use insults in their interactions, referred to as cyberbullying . Hiding behind a screen name allows users to say mean, insulting comments with anonymity; these bullies rarely have to take responsibility for their comments and actions. User-submitted threats of violence are comments that contain mild or strong threats of physical violence against

2924-546: The latter to end communication with the advertiser via SMS altogether. Despite the high number of phone users, there has not been so much phone spam, because there is a charge for sending SMS. Recently, there are also observations of mobile phone spam delivered via browser push notifications. These can be a result of allowing websites which are malicious or delivering malicious ads to send a user notifications. Facebook and Twitter are not immune to messages containing spam links. Spammers hack into accounts and send false links under

2992-451: The lawsuit for several thousand U.S. dollars in June 2004. But the law is criticized by many for not being effective enough. Indeed, the law was supported by some spammers and organizations that support spamming, and opposed by many in the anti-spam community. Earthlink won a $ 25 million judgment against one of the most notorious and active "spammers" Khan C. Smith in 2001 for his role in founding

3060-504: The menu items in the Monty Python sketch. One of the earliest people to use "spam" in this sense was Joel Furr . This use had also become established—to "spam" Usenet was to flood newsgroups with junk messages. The word was also attributed to the flood of " Make Money Fast " messages that clogged many newsgroups during the 1990s. In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English , which had previously only defined "spam" in relation to

3128-466: The modern spam industry which dealt billions in economic damage and established thousands of spammers into the industry. His email efforts were said to make up more than a third of all Internet email being sent from 1999 until 2002. Sanford Wallace and Cyber Promotions were the target of a string of lawsuits, many of which were settled out of court, up through a 1998 Earthlink settlement that put Cyber Promotions out of business. Attorney Laurence Canter

3196-649: The old email spam content resurfaced on social networks, from Viagra ads, to work-from-home scams , to counterfeit merchandise . Recent analysis showed social spammers content preferences changing slightly, with apparel and sports accounting for 36% of all posts. Others included: porn and pills (16%), SEO/web development (23%), and mortgage loans (12%). Social networking spam is spam directed specifically at users of internet social networking services such as Google+ , Facebook , Pinterest , LinkedIn , or MySpace . Experts estimate that as many as 40% of social network accounts are used for spam. These spammers can utilize

3264-658: The origins of spam were analyzed by Cisco Systems . They provided a report that shows spam volume originating from countries worldwide. Hormel Foods Corporation , the maker of SPAM luncheon meat, does not object to the Internet use of the term "spamming". However, they did ask that the capitalized word "Spam" be reserved to refer to their product and trademark. The European Union 's Internal Market Commission estimated in 2001 that "junk email" cost Internet users €10 billion per year worldwide. The California legislature found that spam cost United States organizations alone more than $ 13 billion in 2007, including lost productivity and

3332-500: The pages' ranking. The page is then slightly changed and sold for profit. Bulk submissions are a set of comments repeated multiple times with the same or very similar text. These messages, also called as spam-bombs, can come in the form of one spammer sending out duplicate messages to a group of people in a short period of time, or many active spam accounts simultaneously posting duplicate messages. Bulk messages can cause certain topics or hashtags to trend highly. For example, in 2009,

3400-445: The public and by Internet service providers , which have added extra capacity to cope with the volume. Spamming has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions. A person who creates spam is called a spammer . The term spam is derived from the 1970 "Spam" sketch of the BBC sketch comedy television series Monty Python's Flying Circus . The sketch, set in a cafe , has

3468-699: The repeated posting of a message (or substantially similar messages). The prevalence of Usenet spam led to the development of the Breidbart Index as an objective measure of a message's "spamminess". Forum spam is the creation of advertising messages on Internet forums. It is generally done by automated spambots. Most forum spam consists of links to external sites, with the dual goals of increasing search engine visibility in highly competitive areas such as weight loss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, and generating more traffic for these commercial websites. Some of these links contain code to track

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3536-422: The rise, with analysts reporting over a tripling of social spam activity in six months. It is estimated that up to 40% of all social user accounts are fake, depending on the site. In August, 2012, Facebook admitted through its updated regulatory filing that 8.7% of its 955 million active accounts were fake. Commercial spam is a comment that has commercial content irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Many of

3604-640: The social network's search tools to target certain demographic segments, or use common fan pages or groups to send notes from fraudulent accounts. Such notes may include embedded links to pornographic or other product sites designed to sell something. In response to this, many social networks have included a "report spam/abuse" button or address to contact. Spammers, however, frequently change their address from one throw-away account to another, and are thus hard to track. Facebook pages with pictures and text asking readers to e.g. "show your support" or "vote" are used to gather likes, comments and shares which improve

3672-497: The spam-advertised goods in the study; and, 3) a "financial blacklist" of banking entities that do business with spammers would dramatically reduce monetization of unwanted e-mails. Moreover, this blacklist could be updated far more rapidly than spammers could acquire new banking resources, an asymmetry favoring anti-spam efforts. An ongoing concern expressed by parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and

3740-501: The spambot's identity; if a sale goes through, the spammer behind the spambot earns a commission. Mobile phone spam is directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone . This can be especially irritating to customers not only for the inconvenience, but also because of the fee they may be charged per text message received in some markets. To comply with CAN-SPAM regulations in the US, SMS messages now must provide options of HELP and STOP,

3808-641: The subject line of the postings. Defiant in the face of widespread condemnation, the attorneys claimed their detractors were hypocrites or "zealots", claimed they had a free speech right to send unwanted commercial messages, and labeled their opponents "anti-commerce radicals". The couple wrote a controversial book entitled How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway . An early example of nonprofit fundraising bulk posting via Usenet also occurred in 1994 on behalf of CitiHope, an NGO attempting to raise funds to rescue children at risk during

3876-417: The survey, and the archive file itself, is worthless and does not contain the file in question at all), or in extreme cases, malware . Others may upload videos presented in an infomercial -like format selling their product which feature actors and paid testimonials , though the promoted product or service is of dubious quality and would likely not pass the scrutiny of a standards and practices department at

3944-403: The total available hosting registrars and autonomous systems, with 80 percent of spam programs overall being distributed over just 20 percent of all registrars and autonomous systems; 2) of the 76 purchases for which the researchers received transaction information, there were only 13 distinct banks acting as credit card acquirers and only three banks provided the payment servicing for 95 percent of

4012-407: The trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users." There was also an effort to differentiate between types of newsgroup spam. Messages that were crossposted to too many newsgroups at once, as opposed to those that were posted too frequently, were called "velveeta" (after

4080-509: The victims' inexperience with computer technology to trick them (e.g., phishing ). One of the world's most prolific spammers, Robert Alan Soloway , was arrested by US authorities on May 31, 2007. Described as one of the top ten spammers in the world, Soloway was charged with 35 criminal counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud , aggravated identity theft, and money laundering. Prosecutors allege that Soloway used millions of "zombie" computers to distribute spam during 2003. This

4148-419: The virus, who attribute it to organized online crime gangs. Mydoom was named by Craig Schmugar, an employee of computer security firm McAfee and one of the earliest discoverers of the worm. Schmugar chose the name after noticing the text "mydom" within a line of the program's code. He noted: "It was evident early on that this would be very big. I thought having 'doom' in the name would be appropriate." Mydoom

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4216-481: The volume of email spam. According to "2014 Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 19" published by Symantec Corporation , spam volume dropped to 66% of all email traffic. An industry of email address harvesting is dedicated to collecting email addresses and selling compiled databases. Some of these address-harvesting approaches rely on users not reading the fine print of agreements, resulting in their agreeing to send messages indiscriminately to their contacts. This

4284-628: The worm avoids all .edu addresses, but this is not the case. The original version, Mydoom.A , is described as carrying two payloads : A second version, Mydoom.B , as well as carrying the original payloads, also targets the Microsoft website and blocks access to Microsoft sites and popular online antivirus sites by modifying the hosts file , thus blocking virus removal tools or updates to antivirus software. The smaller number of copies of this version in circulation meant that Microsoft's servers suffered few ill effects. Spamming Spamming

4352-457: Was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET on May 3, 1978. Rather than send a separate message to each person, which was the standard practice at the time, he had an assistant, Carl Gartley, write a single mass email. Reaction from the net community was fiercely negative, but the spam did generate some sales. Spamming had been practiced as

4420-469: Was also used to prevent members of rival groups from chatting—for instance, Star Wars fans often invaded Star Trek chat rooms, filling the space with blocks of text until the Star Trek fans left. It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many, if not all newsgroups, just as Spam appeared in all

4488-490: Was disbarred by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1997 for sending prodigious amounts of spam advertising his immigration law practice. In 2005, Jason Smathers , a former America Online employee, pleaded guilty to charges of violating the CAN-SPAM Act . In 2003, he sold a list of approximately 93 million AOL subscriber e-mail addresses to Sean Dunaway who sold the list to spammers. In 2007, Robert Soloway lost

4556-464: Was sentenced to six years in prison, and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona , was sentenced to 63 months. In addition, the two were fined $ 100,000, ordered to pay $ 77,500 in restitution to AOL , and ordered to forfeit more than $ 1.1 million, the amount of illegal proceeds from their spamming operation. The charges included conspiracy , fraud , money laundering , and transportation of obscene materials. The trial, which began on June 5,

4624-699: Was the first to include charges under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 , according to a release from the Department of Justice . The specific law that prosecutors used under the CAN-Spam Act was designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in spam. In 2005, Scott J. Filary and Donald E. Townsend of Tampa, Florida were sued by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist for violating the Florida Electronic Mail Communications Act. The two spammers were required to pay $ 50,000 USD to cover

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