BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Man gets nine years for spamming

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Man gets nine years for spamming: “Man gets nine years for spamming
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Jaynes remains free while his case is being appealed
A man has been sentenced to nine years in jail by a Virginia judge for sending millions of junk emails, or ’spamming’.

Jeremy Jaynes, 30, is the first person in the US to get a prison term in a spam case. He is said to have been the world’s eighth most prolific spammer.

By selling sham products and services advertised in his messages, he earned up to $750,000 (£398,000) per month.

Jaynes has appealed, and the court has put off the start of his prison term because the new law raises questions.

Under Virginia law, sending bulk email using fake addresses is a crime.

‘It was not just sending bulk emails, he was falsifying the routing information, disguising the origin,’ said prosecutor Lisa Hicks Thomas.

‘The end user couldn’t say: don’t send this to me,’ she added.

Ms Thomas said she was pleased with the ruling and hoped it would be upheld.

‘Never again’

Jaynes was operating though an America Online (AOL) server in Loudoun County, where the world’s largest Internet services provider is based, and is believed to have sent some 10m unwanted emails a day.

Products advertised in his emails included a ‘Fed-Ex refund processor’ which he claimed would have allowed people to earn $75 an hour by working from home.

Jaynes, who is from North Carolina, will appeal on the grounds that he has been charged as an out-of-state resident under a Virginia law that has only just come into effect.

His sentence is the harshest punishment handed down so far for junk emailing in the US, and appears to be a strong signal that authorities will not tolerate the spamming business.

Jaynes has pledged that regardless of the final outcome of his trial, he will never again be involved in what he called the ‘email marketing business’.

It is believed that 70% of all emails are spam. “

Fake Microsoft security updates circulate | CNET News.com

Fake Microsoft security updates circulate | CNET News.com: “An e-mail campaign designed to lure people to a bogus Microsoft Web site is making the rounds as part of an attempt to install a Trojan horse, antivirus company Sophos said Friday.

Attackers are sending out fake e-mails that claim to come from Microsoft’s Windows Update. People who click on the link in the message are steered to a site that looks like Microsoft’s security update site, where they are urged to download fake patches.

But should unsuspecting users download the bogus patches, they will infect their computers with the Troj/DSNX-05 Trojan horse, according to Sophos. That, in turn, will let the attackers remotely take control of the infected PC.

‘Microsoft does not issue security warnings this way,’ said Graham Cluley, Sophos senior technology consultant. ‘They don’t send updates in an HTML format, so don’t follow the links in an e-mail. If you want to see if an update is real, you need to go to the real Microsoft Web site and check there.’

People, however, are likely to click on the phony Microsoft update notices, given that they are making the rounds at the same time as Microsoft is poised to issue its regular monthly security update.

‘Next week, Microsoft is going to release their monthly security patches. So with all the news that is out there about it, some people may be tempted to click on the (bogus) link,’ Cluley said.

Microsoft has posted a notice on its site saying that on Tuesday it will issue some critical patches for Windows, Office, MSN Messenger and Exchange.

The software maker is aware of the bogus e-mails, a company representative said Friday. It is encouraging people to go directly to its Web site for updates, instead of clicking on a link that purportedly takes them there. Once on the legitimate Microsoft site, they can click on the link that provides information on how to tell if a Microsoft security notice is legitimate.

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