A New York spam aficionado just got 30 months in jail for spamming AOL subscribers. He must also pay the company $180,000. Too bad nobody ever got locked up for mailing all those AOL CD-ROMs.
The spammer, 27-year-old Adam Vitale, circumvented AOL's spam filter and spammed AOL's 1.2 million subscribers on behalf of a government informant. Vitale, who has also been accused of running a Craigslist prostitution ring, had made a deal with the informant to send out junk emails advertising software in exchange for 50 percent of the software's profits.
I just signed in to my ancient AOL account to do some research and found 94 emails, aka my inbox, I would classify as spam, all received in the last month (see image). So I'm thinking it can't be that hard to crack the filter. Either way, as Vitale received his spamming sentence, the federal judge told him that "spamming is serious criminal conduct." Do you agree? Was a two-and-a-half-year sentence fair?
Republic
Jipepe
Minnetonka
The idea of jailing people for spam started circulating I think 4 or 5 years ago, and it always strikes me as so stupid and wasteful.
"spamming is serious criminal conduct."
What is the difference between email spam and the junk mail I get every day from my mailman? At least spam isn't wasting ink and paper.
1"circumvented AOL's spam filter and spammed AOL's 1.2 million subscribers on behalf of a government informant."
2I don't get this - was this a spam sting?
According to that photo, you apparently go to Sexytime Prison.
3Sometimes the pictures on these posts are related, but not quite right...
4Oh my God, I didn't even notice that photo. How funny.
Spamming is annoying, but how is it "serious criminal conduct"? Whom is it hurting? Whose property has it stolen?
5hey bro what are you doing on citizen sugar? and shouldnt you be working?
6Sis? What are you doing here? Please don't tell mom.
7Oh, my.
8
9I've heard arguments that it hurts productivity and businesses lose millions in aggregated lost work time. But I think that's baloney.
10couldn't that be said of Citizen?
11Exactly. And the water cooler. And coworkers who get drunk at the Christmas party, mandating hours be spent rehashing their behavior. And a variety of pens, wasting precious seconds deciding which to use. It seems like such a stretch to me.
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