We regularly keep you up to date and in the know on the latest scams floating around Facebook, with well known ones such as “this girl will never forget to turn her webcam of again“, regularly tricking users. You may be pleased that the sinister man who sits on the other side of the computer screen sending all of these scams around has been arrested and faces some heavy jail time.
The self labelled King of Spam, 43 year old Sanford Wallace is looking at serious criminal charges for fraud which could land him with at least 16 years in prison if he is found guilty. The US based cyber criminal is being accused of compromising people’s Facebook accounts and sending over 27 million spam messages in 2008 and 2009, according to PC World. The spammer would use illegal techniques of obtaining people’s personal details and then make money from them.
Wallace apparently made his money by using phishing attacks to steal Facebook user’s log in names and passwords, and then use stolen credentials to post spam to the victims profiles. When unknowing people click on the spam message it spreads to their friends profiles and drives up web traffic to affiliate marketing companies, who pay their members by the number of clicks they can deliver to websites.
The scams will normally adopt a title with something outrageous which the victim could not pass up the opportunity to miss, such as “Dad Drops His Daughter to Try to Catch a Baseball“. Due to the temptation to click, the scam will affect millions of users, making the cyber criminal even more money in the process. This is just an example of many sickening scams that have plagued the popular social networking site.
This is by means not the only rogue activity that Wallace has had his fingers in. In the past he gained quite a reputation for defending the act of spamming, facing many civil actions for his illegal activities in the 1990′s. The spammer has previously been hit with lawsuits from the US Trade Commission, MySpace and also Facebook, who not only banned Wallace from their site, but served him with a US$711 million civil judgment which they won.
This judgement did not deter the crook from getting on the site as he created a new account under the alias “David Sinful-Saturdays Fredericks”. Wallace was bailed yesterday on a $100,000 bond, with his next court appearance due on 22nd August. Should the spammer be severely punished or is everyone making too much of a big deal out of this situation? Let us know your thoughts on this by leaving a comment, what sentence would you give Wallace?
