At this point, it's definitely safe to say that nobody likes "spam". It's pretty universally considered to be the most significant negative aspect of the Internet. But it's usually also seen as an inevitable result of the Internet's incredible positives -- namely, freedom of information and ease of access.
And as bad as spam is, X-rated spam is many times worse.
It's hard to imagine that even people who like pornography enjoy getting bombarded with unwanted X-rated emails. Whether you do business online or are just a casual email user, this kind of spam is, at best, an annoyance. At its worst, it's an embarrassment and an outrage.
With that in mind, we're happy to share some news that just may bring a smile to your face: Finally, the U.S. Government has succeeded in shutting down some of the most notorious porn spammers, and is actually putting them behind bars. From yesterday's Guardian:
One of the world's first successful prosecutions against internet 'spammers' has seen two men sentenced to five years in jail in Arizona.
The two, who sent millions of unsolicited pornographic emails and netted millions of dollars, were the subjects of the first US prosecution under new federal anti-spam laws, US Department of Justice officials said.
Jeffrey A Kilbride, of Venice, California, and James R Schaffer, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, bought lists of email addresses and sent the owners links to pornographic websites, prosecutors said. They were convicted of charges including conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and transportation of obscene materials after a three-week trial and were sentenced by a federal judge in Phoenix.
Over nine months in 2004, Kilbride, Schaffer and an associate transmitted more than 600,000 spam messages, according to court documents. They were paid commissions based on the number of people who accessed the websites via the spam.
Kilbride and Schaffer tried to make it seem as if they were sending messages from abroad by logging in to servers in Amsterdam. But those messages originated from Phoenix, prosecutors said. They were also ordered to forfeit $1.3m.
Read the entire article here, and feel free to share some comments with other readers.
