[ insider_reports_insider ]
Japan Nails Massive Spammer
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-02-19
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Yuki Shiina reputedly sent more than 2 billion junk messages promoting gambling and dating websites.
 | | Japan Nails Massive Spammer |  |
The 25-year-old's spamming came to the attention of authorities after an ISP complained of his massive mailings. His activities reportedly began in May 2006.
Security vendor Sophos said Shiina acquired a list of 600,000 email addresses for 100,000 yen (about $927) and earned 2 million yen (about $18,540) in advertising for his spamming.
In sending out the junk mail with forged sender addresses, Shiina broke a law specifically banning that practice, according to Japan Today.
"The suspect told police he didn't think he would be arrested," Japan Today said.
Commentary in response to the Japan Today story found no sympathy for Shiina. Suggestions ranging from heavy fines and jail time to hanging and populated the comments.
Unfortunately, Shiina's case is at the tip of a veritable iceberg of spamming. Sophisticated organized criminals operating in places like Russia have no fear of a Shiina scenario, thanks to ineffective at best law enforcement.
However, the ISP aspect of the story makes us wonder why an ISP in the US can't notice big outflows of mail, indicative of a botnetted computer, and take some kind of action. If a Comcast can interfere with torrent traffic without even eliciting a yawn from the government, other providers should be able to clamp down on obvious bot behavior on their networks.
View All Articles by David Utter
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
More insider_reports_insider Articles
Insider Reports RSS Feed
|
|
