In a landmark judgment, MySpace has been awarded $230 million in its suit against the so-called Spam King, Sanford Wallace and his partner Walter Rines. The decision, handed down in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday, is the largest award so far since the CAN-SPAM Act was introduced in 2003.

MySpace decided to sue when it discovered the duo had lured MySpace users into revealing their login information through phishing sites. After obtaining user IDs and passwords, the pair distributed messages to the users’ friends list with links to various Web sites involving gambling, pornography and ringtones.

According to court documents, Wallace and Rines distributed 735,925 messages during the scam and earned over $500,000 in the process. The spam campaign caused hundreds of complaints and a big headache for MySpace, especially since the spam indiscriminately sent pornography links to minors as well as adults.

The federal judge in the case fined the spam partners the maximum amount under the law. CAN-SPAM allows for fines of $100 per message and that number can be tripled for particularly abusive practices. The pair were fined $163.4 million under two parts of CAN-SPAM, Rines was singled out for an extra $63.4 million, $1.5 million was for violating California’s anti-phishing laws. Rines and Wallace were also ordered to pay another $4.7 million for incurred legal fees.

A Legacy of Spamming and Litigation

Sanford Wallace is a spamming legend. Over the years he has run various companies including Spambot.net, Cyber Promotions, and Seismic Entertainment Productions - all have faced litigation. In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission won a judgment against Wallace for $4 million for a spyware-related scam. Wallace also made news in 1996, when he was blacklisted and refused service by several Internet Service Providers including AOL and Compuserve.

Can One Spam-Busting Suit Make a Difference?

The judgement against Wallace may seem to be a historic case and a warning to other spam-based businesses out there. But will it really work? MySpace thinks so. In an interview with the Associated Press, MySpace’s security chief, Hemanshu Nigam, said, “Anybody who’s been thinking about engaging in spam are going to say ‘Wow, I better not go there’.”

That sentiment seems doubtful to me. According to The Register Wallace’s last known location was Las Vegas, but his current whereabouts are unknown; so collecting the money will be next to impossible. It may send a message, but it only works if you can actually punish the perpetrators.

CREDIT - PC World contributor Ian Paul

Monday, Luxembourg-based Skype Limited announced a new monthly service plan called “Unlimited”. It’s expected that the service will bring on different opportunities for mobile users and change style on communications.

As of Skype Limited, this “Unlimited” monthly service with no long-term contract is designed for different kind users from 34 countries. There are three main services, “Unlimited Country” for local landline call by user’s choice, “Unlimited World” to communicate with 34 countries globally, and exclusivity services for different continents in Europe, Asia, and North America.

In a launch press conference in Taiwan yesterday, Robert Lo, Vice President of PChome Online, commented this new service to media in Taiwan and said: “After the WiMAX technology was progressively accepted in public world-wide, the population of Skype will be more improved.”

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A group of Chinese nationalist hackers calling themselves “Revenge of the Flame” has temporarily called off a planned attack on the website of news channel CNN. The group had organized the attack in protest of the network’s coverage of unrest in Tibet, which they believed was overly critical of China and biased in favor of the Tibetans.

The group planned to take the CNN website offline by flooding its servers with internet traffic, in what is known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The attack was scheduled for April 19, but was canceled because too many others had become aware of their plan.

“Our original plan for 19 April has been canceled because too many people are aware of it and the situation is chaotic,” the group said in a statement released April 17. However, they repeatedly stated that the attack would commence on another day. “The attack hasn’t been cancelled; it will be carried out on an unspecified day in the near future,” the statement read.

Despite the attack being calling off, some had apparently decided to proceed earlier than expected. On Thursday, CNN reported attempts to disrupt its website, prompting countermeasures that affected the site’s availability for some users in Asia. “CNN took preventative measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt our Web site,” the network said in a statement. “A small percentage of CNN.com users in Asia are impacted.”

CNN and other Western media outlets have come under criticism from Chinese viewers in the past weeks for their coverage of China and Tibet. The movement against CNN has spawned the website anti-cnn.com, which aims to “expose the lies and distortions in the western media”. The site generates over five million hits a day, according to its founder, Rao Jin. The movement also spawned the slogan “Don’t be too CNN”, which is the basis for two songs that have become increasingly popular among Internet users in China.

In a statement, CNN responded to the criticism of their reporting. “CNN’s reputation is based on reporting global news accurately and impartially,” the network stated, “while our coverage through the use of words, images or video always reflects a wide range of opinions and points of view on every story.”

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On the back of new restrictions being imposed on eBay users in the UK requiring that sellers offer PayPal payments for all sales, eBay Australia is mandating that only PayPal payments will be acceptable as of June 17. PayPal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay, and charges a 30¢ transaction fee, plus a commission between 1.1% for high volume traders, and 2.4% for low value or low volume traders. These higher costs will be passed onto buyers.

Cash payment on pick up will be the only other payment option, and it may only be offered in conjunction with PayPal.

eBay has brought in this restriction under the guise of improving customer protection, bolstering its “Paypal Buyer Protection” insurance programme to allow claims up to $20,000 instead of the previous maximum of $3,000, however as of June 17 many of the items which would exceed $3,000 are no longer covered by the programme, such as services, vehicles, real estate and businesses.

eBay Trust and Safety director Alastair MacGibbon said this change was not in response to the once-off fund established in March to refund eBay buyers who lost their non-existent holiday accommodation packages from the Melbourne eBay seller Robert Kobis. Mr MacGibbon said “It is part of a much larger initiative”.

In addition to these measures, Paypal will be withholding funds from some sellers for 21 days until the earliest of the following occurs:

- the buyer leaves positive feedback,
- 3 days after confirmed item delivery
- 21 days without a dispute, claim, chargeback, or reversal filed on that transaction

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has held discussion with eBay, but declined to comment. The Australian Consumers Association spokesman Christopher Zinn said the unique use of PayPal could give rise to competition issues, however if the costs charged stayed as they were, they had no further concerns.

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The United Kingdom is listed second in a report on global cyber-crime statistics, behind the United States and ahead of cyber-crime “hotspots” Nigeria and Romania. The 2007 Internet Crime Report was released in April by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a joint operation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center.

Americans reported losses of US$240 million from global cyber-crime in 2007, a $40 million increase from 2006. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 206,884 complaints of online fraud in 2007, a decrease from the previous year’s 207,492 complaints.

FBI special agent John Hambrick, in charge of the IC3 unit, told the Agence France-Presse “We’re seeing more schemes involving bigger ticket items, get-rich-quick and work-at-home schemes that involve higher dollar losses”. As the report only includes figures from crimes reported to law enforcement, it is likely that real crime numbers were higher.

FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James E. Finch commented on the report: “The Internet presents a wealth of opportunity for would be criminals to prey on unsuspecting victims, and this report shows how extensive these types of crime have become … What this report does not show is how often this type of activity goes unreported. Filing a complaint through IC3 is the best way to alert law enforcement authorities of Internet crime.”

In response to the report’s release, the information technology consultancy Global Secure Systems (GSS) warned that the United Kingdom is becoming a hotbed of internet crime. According to the report, the UK accounts for 15.3 per cent of online crime from US crime reports. “This is significantly ahead of other cyber-crime hotspots such as Nigeria (5.7 per cent) and Romania (1.5 per cent),” said David Hobson, managing director of GSS, in an interview with vnunet.com.

The 2007 Internet Crime Report cites the top ten countries by amount of perpetrators of online crime. In descending order, the top ten list includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Canada, Romania, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Russia, and Ghana. Scammers living within the United States most often lived in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Men lost more money to online fraud than women in 2007, and also accounted for 75 percent of cyber-crime perpetrators.

FBI spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan told CIO Today that online scammers attempt to take advantage of the good will of individuals, asking for money for purported charities during crises. “The scammer tries to prey on victims who are kind of in tune with what’s going on in the world. The scam changes, but ultimately they’re preying on the good will of people,” said Milhoan.

The most widely reported complaint was Internet auction fraud at 35.7 per cent of referred crime complaints. Other online criminal activities cited in the report include non-delivery of purchases and credit/debit card fraud, computer intrusions, spam/unsolicited e-mail, and child pornography. The report also seeks to raise awareness of other types of cyber-crimes, and describes steps individuals can take both to prevent internet crime, and to report it if they have been victimized.

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Flickr, the online photo sharing service owned by American internet company Yahoo!, today launched a new video-sharing service for “Pro” users. After 4 months of waiting since an unofficial “coming soon” on the Flickr forums, subscribers to the service are now able to upload videos of up to 90 seconds in length, or 150 MB in size.

After some criticism over the website diversifying too much, Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ, and Yahoo! spokesperson George Hadjigeorgiou responded by calling these 90-second videos “long photos”, which capture a “slice of life to share”.

Mr. Hadjigeorgiou elaborated, by saying that “digital media has led to new behaviour with digital photography fans and we’ve seen a huge growth in people taking short video clips, essentially ‘long photos’, with their digital still cameras and mobile phones.” He added that he could see “a great resonance between this new category of content and with the kind of authentic, personal moments already being shared on Flickr.”

“Pro” users, who pay a yearly subscription of US$24.95 for unlimited file uploads, have also had their filesize limit increased to 20 MB for each individual photo, and other members, who do not pay a subscription, have had their limit raised to 10 MB per photo. “Free” members are currently unable to upload videos.

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Five years after its launch, Apple Computer’s iTunes downloadable music service in February passed Wal-Mart to become the No. 1 music seller in the United States, according to figures released April 3 by NPD Group, a market research firm.

The firm said more than 4 billion songs had been downloaded from the iTunes store since its launch in 2003 and that as of February, the iTunes store accounts for 70% of all digital music sales. NPD said according to those figures, Apple’s iTunes store passes U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy for the No. 2 U.S. music retailer in 2007.

According to an April 2nd report in Ars Technica, an internal memo at Apple showed the company passed Wal-Mart as the top U.S. music seller Wal-Mart at the beginning of the year. Their projections showed that as of January 2008, Apple’s iTunes held 19 percent of the U.S. music market with Wal-Mart at 15 percent, followed by Best Buy at 13 percent. Rounding out the top five were Amazon.com and Target at 6 percent each.

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Hefei – Direct Internet connection to Wikipedia has been restored in China since this morning with the exception of the Chinese version, which is still unavailable and whose domain name (zh.wikipedia.org) is still a filtered keyword. This comes one week after the similar removal of restrictions on connections to all non-Chinese content of BBC News website, and the unblocking of Google’s Blogspot. It is still unclear how long the ease of restrictions will last.

In an April 3 commentary, BBC’s Asia bureau chief Paul Danahar, who is based in Beijing, confirmed that “Wikipedia has now been partially unblocked by the Chinese”.

The International Olympic Committee recently warned China that it wanted the internet freely accessible for the entire duration of the Olympic Summer Games. Unrestricted access is guaranteed to the 30,000 reporters and media staff expected for the Olympics under Beijing’s ‘host city contract’.

In 2006, China lifted and then reinstated the ban on Wikipedia. The operation of the so-called Great Firewall is still shrouded in secrecy. Chinese Wikipedians have pleaded to the government in the past for the unblocking of Wikipedia, but to no avail.

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Around 30,000 registered sex offenders in the United Kingdom could be made to provide the government with their email addresses, in order for their access to social networking sites to be blocked.

New government proposals would mean that the addresses provided would be passed onto sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, and others, who would then be responsible for blocking or monitoring access from those email addresses.

Offenders who refuse to, or provide fake emails, could expect jail terms of up to five years under the proposal, which, according to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is designed to allow children to be “free from fear” whilst on line.

The policy has been welcomed by online protection groups, however others have commented that the policing of the internet is not possible. The criticism comes on the same day that The Carphone Warehouse refused to disconnect customers who shared music for free.

The details of the policy will be decided in the future, by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which currently investigates around 400 reports of abuse every month, and internet firms.

It is estimated that around half of all children aged from 8 to 17 have at least one profile on a networking site.

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An internet forum, run by the non-profit Epilepsy Foundation, was attacked last week by a group of vandals. The attack, first reported by Wired News, exploited a function of the forums to post JavaScript code. The code injected by the vandals flashed two images repeatedly and tried to lead users off to external websites showing flashing lights and shapes intended to trigger off epileptic fits. The Epilepsy Foundation had to shut down the forum, and took some measures to prevent future attacks.

In a press release, the Foundation stated that several users of the forum, sufferers of epilepsy, experienced harsh migraines and seizures as a result of the attack. One woman, RyAnne Fultz, was paralyzed by the flashing images in what she calls her worst attack in over a year, until her 11-year old son managed to get her to stop looking at the screen and close the flashing images.

They also posted a message regarding new measures saying “In our upping of security on the forums, we have established the following new rules: No animated images are allowed to be used anywhere from now on. No GIFs are allowed at all anymore as well. No rich text is allowed in the body of messages at all, either.”

Wired News additionally reports that there is “circumstantial evidence” linking the perpetrators of the attack to the internet group “Anonymous”, who are most well known for their recent protests and attacks against the Church of Scientology, and their members created a reputation as “griefers” in the virtual worlds Second Life, and Habbo Hotel. The Austrian paper Krone reports that the “usual goal of their attacks is to raise a fuss or disturb others”. Following critical reports about the attack, members of the group blamed the attack on the Church of Scientology.

Wired News states that the attack on the forum may have been the first computer attack in history to inflict physical harm on its victims.

Between three and five per cent of all epilepsy sufferers are vulnerable to seizures triggered by flashing lights, shapes or colours, like ones used in the attack. Photosensitive epilepsy has been in the news increasingly over the last few years as various media have triggered seizures in people.

Recently a logo animation for the 2012 London Olympics caused thousands of people to experience seizures. In another incident, the episode “Dennō Senshi Porygon” of the animated TV series Pokémon caused thousands of children to experience seizures in Japan. In March, MTV refused to air a new video by Gnarls Barkley out of fear it would trigger seizures.

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