MySpace Wins Major Spam Court Settlement

May 14th, 2008 Posted in News

MySpace has just been awarded a gargantuan £120 million after a legal judgment went in their favour over junk messages being sent to the millions of members on the social networking site. The ruling is reported to be the largest ever sum related to spam messages and junk email; although chances of MySpace actually receiving the money are rather slim. The culprits even failed to show up in court for the hearing.

It will however act as a warning to anyone else who would like to hijack MySpace in order to send junks messages. Spammers are carrying out their work purely to make money so this kind of prosecution will show them that their actions will not be tolerated on social networking sites.

The two culprits, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines used their own profiles as well as hacked profiles of regular users to make their junk messages seem like legitimate messages. The messages contained links to websites that would pay the spammers an amount for every visitor. It is believed that the pair sent over 730,000 messages to MySpace members.

The argument put forward by MySpace lawyers was that the links were not only causing complaints and costing them money but also contained some pornographic material, subsequently putting vulnerable members at risk. US law puts a price of a $100 dollars on each spam message hence the huge figure that MySpace were seeking in reparations. The judge in charge of the case sided with the social networking site granting them all of their monetary demands form Mr Rines and Mr Wallace.

The question remains whether legal teams will be able to track down the culprits and retrieve the funds due to the notorious anonymity of the internet. Despite this, the judge ruled that both men were not to embark on any similar campaigns in the future. News of this may well please MySpace but clearly the war on spammers is not yet over, MySpace are currently pursuing another spammer for similar offences in a case that is not yet settled. Whether this bold action will completely deter spammers is still in question, it is hoped that this kind of affirmative action should act to combat the work of these unscrupulous operators.