N.Y. Teenager Arrested Over Instant-Message Spam

Anthony Greco, an 18-year-old teenager from New York, was arrested at the Los Angeles airport on charges of spamming, extortion and harming the computers of MySpace, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The police say Greco’s suspected of sending 1.5 million instances of “spim” (IM spam) to users of MySpace, a social-networking company that had its own internal user-to-user messaging system that was somewhere between IM (instant messaging) and email. They hinted that the spim was porn-related, but didn’t say for sure what Greco was selling.

His “extortion” request is fascinating: He told MySpace he wanted to PAY THEM $150 a day for the exclusive right to send advertising to MySpace users (thus making his spam legit). If he wasn’t given that contract, he would release his MySpace-spimming software to a wider community to take advantage of.

This tells me he had already been making at least $150 / day—that’s a minimum of $55,000 / year, and probably much higher.  Not bad for an 18-year-old.  Frankly, not bad for a 30-year-old—let’s wait and see if they can make the charges stick, eh?

I’m kidding, of course.  Spam probably generates the worst possible buzz for your company, and irritates 99.9% of your customers, too.  If you’re a legitimate company, don’t even get close to spam.

But revenue figures like Greco’s explain why spam is such a growing problem.  How many 18-year-olds, given the opportunity to make $150 / day running a spam script using their parents’ broadband connection, would give it a try? Enough to fill my inbox every day, that’s for sure.

Posted by Travis Smith on 02/19 at 12:32 AM • Blogging News
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Comments

  1. Not only that, but the so-called “sting” reaks of entrapment to me.

    The one article I read had the DA saying that they “lured” him out there.

    Posted by Jason on 02/22/05 at 10:03 AM

  2. this website was kind of gay!  i didnt understand it and it was useless.

    Posted by lori on 10/16/07 at 06:34 AM
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