ScamsOnline

Spam King Busted by Secret Service

Adam Vitale, aka Batch1 aka Baxter, 25, of Boynton Beach, FL, and his partner Todd Moeller, aka M3rk, of New Jersey, are accused of sending nearly 50,000 pieces of spam e-mail to more than 1.2 million AOL subscribers. US Secret Service agents used a confidential informant to hire Moeller and Vitale to deliver spam, which advertised a computer security product.

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Convicted data thief gets eight years

A bulk e-mailer who looted more than a billion records with personal information from a data warehouse has been sentenced to eight years in prison, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Scott Levine, 46, was sentenced by a federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., after being found guilty of breaking into Acxiom's servers and downloading gigabytes of data in what the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the largest data heists to date. Acxiom, based in Little Rock, says it operates the world's largest repository of consumer data, and counts major banks, credit card companies and the U.S. government among its customers.

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US Marine scam email hits inboxes

Security companies are warning of a new email scam that is posing as a letter from a US Marine serving in Iraq.

Spammer Gets $11 Billion Fine

That's not a typo, an Iowa-based Internet service provider (ISP) has been awarded $11.2 billion in a case against spammer James McCalla, who was found guilty of sending over 280 million illegal spam emails. Under state law, the ISP was entitled to $10 per illegal e-mail sent.

Handed down by U. S. District Judge Charles R. Wolle on Dec. 23, the judgment also prohibits McCalla from accessing the Internet for three years.

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Crackdown on spam scam sites

Police have shut down eight overseas websites after tens of thousands of people received bogus emails purporting to be from their bank asking for updated account details.

Consumers have been warned to ignore emails asking for personal information after it emerged that Westpac, Commonwealth and National Bank customers had been targeted. The sites in China, Turkey, Korea and Germany were put out of action during the past four days after some customers received several copies of the emails.

Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Marsha Thomson said yesterday she was concerned that some people might fall for the scam, as the emails contained the bank's logo and a web link, making them look legitimate.

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2005's Top Spam Subject Lines

Remember this scam? In the 1990s, e-mail hoaxers commonly claimed to be passing along a method for getting easy money from Bill Gates. While that particular fraud has faded, the spam-fighting team at Stock scams, phony transaction records and cheap offers says celebrity-based variations continue, even as spammers get more sophisticated.

According to AOL, one of the most prevalent spam subject lines in 2005 was "Donald Trump Wants You _ Please Respond." Another frequent pitch played on the belief that the tech world just gives stuff away to people in the know: "Get an Apple iPod Nano, PS3 or Xbox360 for Free."

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Businessman wins e-mail spam case

A Channel Island businessman has won damages from a company which sent him internet e-mail spam. Nigel Roberts, who lives in Alderney, took action against Media Logistics UK after he had junk e-mails sent to his personal account.

FBI agents bust 'Botmaster'

A 20-year-old man accused of using thousands of hijacked computers, or "bot nets," to damage systems and send massive amounts of spam across the Internet was arrested on Thursday in what authorities called the first such prosecution of its kind.

Jeanson James Ancheta, who prosecutors say was a well-known member of the "Botmaster Underground" -- or the secret network of computer hackers skilled at bot attacks -- was taken into custody after being lured to FBI offices in Los Angeles, said U.S. Attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek.

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Fake E-mail from FBI or CIA is really a Worm

Both the FBI and Internet security companies have announced this week that there is a fake e-mail that looks like it is from the FBI and a similar fake e-mail appearing to be from the CIA going around which are really being sent by the Sober worm. (A worm is loosely similar to a virus: it infects your PC and does nasty things.) The e-mails include an attachment, which is, of course, the worm. If you open the attached file, your PC is immediately infected.

If you get an e-mail that claims to be from the FBI or the CIA, don't open it!

Spammer Sentenced to Six Years in Prison

A 23 year old spammer has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for sending spam and other illegal activities. He had offered thousands of e-mail and website names when he had no right. And when victims complained, he threatened to destroy their internet systems by sending millions of spam e-mails.

Peterborough Crown Court heard he also threatened to fire-bomb the headquarters of the county's trading standards department and petrol-bomb his local police headquarters. When Internet policing group Nominet posted warnings about his activities, he responded by saying he would attack its servers.

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