AOL man pleads guilty to selling 92m email addies

[method77]

An ex-AOL employee has pleaded guilty to stealing 92m customer names and email addresses from the ISP's database. The 24-year old, Jason Smathers, sold the email addresses for $28,000.

Smathers sold the names to Sean Dunaway who used the names to promote his offshore gambling site before selling them on to other spammers. Charges against Dunaway are pending.

Smathers tried to make a guilty plea in December but the judge rejected it because he was not certain a crime had been committed.

Smathers pleaded guilty to conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen property.

He will be sentenced 20 May and faces up to two years in prison. He will also have to pay AOL between $200,000 and $400,000 - the amount it spent fixing the problem. The Judge is unlikely to be sympathetic, he cancelled his own AOL subscription back in December because of the amount of spam in his inbox.

More details at CNN

[Redneck4sure]

I wish they would hang the jerk. If he does it again after that then they should stiffen the penalty.....maybe.... firing squad, hang him then give him a lethal injection. :)

[GabrielYoungFan]

Well that's one way to stop spam.

[KiwiCoromandel]

how about this for mail crimes and invasion of privacy...... <_>

Public fury halts posties snooping

10 February 2005

By RICHARD TROW

New Zealand Post has caved in to intense public pressure and ended its short-lived experiment wiring up posties to "snoop" on the public.

The publicly owned mail company was trialling a new way of gathering data for its business customers by getting posties to record through lapel microphones whether houses on their routes needed repainting. The information was to be used in a marketing campaign.

The practice, reported in The Dominion Post yesterday, prompted fury among members of the public unhappy at their trusted postie being used as a spy.

Yesterday's revelations are also understood to have resulted in a "please explain" call from State Owned Enterprises Minister Paul Swain to New Zealand Post chairman Jim Bolger. Mr Swain made it clear in Parliament yesterday he was unimpressed with the initiative.

He confirmed that the trial had been discontinued "due to public feedback". The company decided to pull the plug yesterday afternoon.

Chief executive John Allen said the company had thought the concept, used in the United States, was appropriate for New Zealand.

"Clearly though, in light of the feedback we have had through the day from lots of New Zealanders, we are not going to be progressing it."

The company had not foreseen the backlash, he said.

"I suppose what it has done is reinforced for us the very high trust with which the community views the postie and it's a fairly clear signal to us that we have got to be careful how we deploy our postie workforce in the community.

"I think the image of the postie will remain strong in the minds of New Zealanders and I hope they also understand that this is a business that needs to continue to try new things, try new ways to deliver service."

However, a union boss said posties on their rounds yesterday took some flak from householders.

The information collected by the four posties used in the five-day trial would be passed on to Resene Paints as required under their agreement, Mr Allen said. Resene would not pay a fee for the service......

Edited February 10, 2005 by kiwibank

[slum_goddess]

1st of all, if people would quit clicking on those 'click here to remove yourself from this list' buttons, that would help fight spam. but they won't.

i think the postman w/lapel mic idea is amazing...what, the paint firm couldn't like just drive around, smoking weed while listing which houses needed painting? lazyass wankers. then again, (if nobody complained) i can see this being taken to new levels of bullshit e.g., a male 'escort' firm hires the post office to make a list of all available single/widowed females and like that.

about this: 'Chief executive John Allen said the company had thought the concept, used in the United States, was appropriate for New Zealand.'

they do that in the states? who knew?