14 May 2008
MySpace has won the largest ever legal judgement against senders of unsolicited commercial email.
£120million was awarded following the no-show of the men behind the spam in court. Despite this anti-spam experts believe MySpace will have little chance of actually getting any of this money.
Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer to AP said:
Anybody who's been thinking about engaging in spam are going to say 'Wow, I better not go there………Spammers don't want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It's our job to send a message to stop them.
Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines created new MySpace accounts and stole passwords to take over existing ones. The pair emailed MySpace members using these accounts to make the mail look like it came from trusted friends. The email would typically ask recipients to view a video or visit a website. Mr Nigam said that the pair would then make money based on hits or by trying to sell things such as ringtones.
MySpace said the duo sent 735,925 messages to its members.
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