AOL Worker Busted for Selling E-mail List to Spam Senders

An ex-AOL software author has confessed to steeling and then selling almost 100 million different AOL usernames. The charges are conspiracy and crossing state line with stolen goods. The addresses were used to send junk spam email

He could end up behind bars for up to 15 years and be fined a half-million dollars. A somewhat more lenient sentence is more likely though.

I honestly had no idea that AOL has 100 million users to steel data on. If those were all U.S. users - it would be on third of the population. I have to suspect this includes users of other ISPs who just have AOL chat accounts.

The prosecution alleged that Jason Smathers used the logon and password of another AOL employee to acquire the information. Data on about 30 million different user accounts were sold to an accomplice. Commonly the spammer will use a spam tool to help weed the list down to a specific subset.

The other party then used the email addresses to send spam for his online casino operation. He may of also resold the list to other senders of spam messages.

And that's how the world of spam lists works. Even if everyone immediately involved ends up in jail, the list of addresses will still be out there floating around.

At some point it will probably show up on Ebay as a "double-opt-in list of verified email addresses."

It will then be used by a commercial email to send "entirely CAN-SPAM compliant" emails to 25 million people. Somehow, that link for blocking email from them in the future won't work. Amazingly, all 25 million will qualify to get iPods free of charge. You just have to sign up for this credit card...

If they're really lucky, they may even get spam pitching anti-spam email software. For the record, the company behind this anti-spam system won't sink to that level.

I came across a list used by a spammer a number of years ago. It probably had about 5 million names on it. I wasn't entirely surprised to find my own address on the list.

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