MySpace spammer handed $6 million bill

**Glaswegian** · 06-18-2008, 01:45 PM

A Colorado man has been ordered to pay $6 million (£3 million) in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users.

Scott Richter of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled on Thursday.

Richter, who was once accused of pumping out more than 100 million spam messages per day, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with an August 2006 campaign in which MySpace members were hit with unsolicited messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case.

The messages were sent to a MySpace community that was ill-equipped to deal with any security problems. At the time, "MySpace only employed two relatively junior staff employees to deal with these issues," Boesch wrote. The company's security staff has now grown to about 40, he added.

http://www.techworld.com/security/ne...&NewsID=101941

06-18-2008, 01:45 PM	#1 (permalink)
Glaswegian Moderator/ Rangemaster TSF Academy; Analyst, Security Team; Oor Wullie; TSF Surgeon and Resident Comic Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Glasgow Posts: 25,503 OS: Win XP Pro SP3 / Win 7 Pro My System Blog Entries: 10	MySpace spammer handed $6 million bill A Colorado man has been ordered to pay $6 million (£3 million) in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users. Scott Richter of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled on Thursday. Richter, who was once accused of pumping out more than 100 million spam messages per day, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with an August 2006 campaign in which MySpace members were hit with unsolicited messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case. The messages were sent to a MySpace community that was ill-equipped to deal with any security problems. At the time, "MySpace only employed two relatively junior staff employees to deal with these issues," Boesch wrote. The company's security staff has now grown to about 40, he added. http://www.techworld.com/security/ne...&NewsID=101941 __________________ Iain - Defender of the Haggis and all things Scottish. I don't help by PM - post in the Forums. PC Safety & Security::PC running a bit slow?::Donate::Photographers Corner