I'm a real estate agent [Not an unreal one? Ed.]
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Kiwis nail big spammer
THE KIWI government has ended the reign of a notorious 'Mr Big' in the spam world after he made the mistake of targeting his homeland.
Lance Atkinson, 26, of Pelican Waters, in Queensland, was a Kiwi living in Australia and had been making a fortune annoying the world with his spams.
Then he decided to mount a campaign on his homeland and between 5 September 2007 and 31 December 2007 he sent two million mails across the Tasman Sea. In a country of four million, two million spams was deemed 'not a fair go' and New Zealand's Internal Affairs' Anti-Spam Compliance Unit went mental.
This spam flogged various herbal products made by Tulip Lab of India, which, given the fact there are lot of herbs in NZ, was a bit like trying to flog jam to the women's institute champion jam maker.
Not only did they track him down but they transported him from Queensland to face the wrath of a Kiwi bewigged one.
Justice Christine French of the High Court in Christchurch remarked that the spamming operation was said to be one of the largest ever and that its impact on New Zealand was huge.
She fined him (Aus) $92,715 after he admitting his role in the operation. Three hundred years ago the Kiwis would have eaten him for less.
Atkinson is also facing charges in the US where a court has frozen his assets at the request of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which also succeeded in having the spam network shut down. µ
L'Inq
AP
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Aside from the fact that a postal service and spammer deliver information, there is little in common between the two. Advertisers are the main source of revenue for the postal services, as they *pay* the postal service to send out their ads. This keeps the price of postage relatively low for regular consumers, so the ads are tolerated as a means to improve the service (like television ads). Spammers, on the other hand, strictly *degrade* service by wasting the bandwidth, time, and money of the people who are *victims* of it. They do not pay for "postage" more than their own internet connections, and certainly don't help subsidize other peoples' internet connection costs through "ads." Yes, let's shoot the messenger, please.
Let's see......
The postman "does not" create and send the junk mail; A spammer "does" create and send the junk mail.
I don't get it. We don't arrest the postman when we get junk mail, so why are we chasing down spammers. They don't do this for fun, they do it because someone pays them to do it. Let's nail the guy with the money. Here we even know who that is. Let's put them in the slammer, and the whole thing will go away in a matter of months.
Yes herbs. We like to protect our own industry.
Good on yer kiwi's. Top result, made my day. Now throw him to the yanks and let them give him a good long stint of San Quentin porridge.