One of the world’s largest spam rings has recently been targeted and shut down by authorities. The internation spam group was connected with Australia, India, China, New Zealand and the United States and is considered one of the most extensive spam operations uncovered to date.

The group used a botnet of 35,000 computers to spam emails that pushed counterfeit drugs, pornography, and herbal male enhancement pills - the kinds of email most think of when they think of spam. The group apparently cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in a single month. The F.T.C. has attempted to freeze the group’s finances while the federal government is pursuing criminal charges against the group.

People who spam like this are criminals and unethical human beings… it’s that simple. I hope they all get caught and are thrown behind bars so that they realize they can’t just hide behind their computer screens.

There’s not much else to say about this. Spam will never die, but every time a large spam group such as this gets caught, a tiny feeling of hope grows inside. That is, until I open my inbox and see hundreds of new offers for Viagra knock-offs.

A great essay is up over at Slashdot that dives into the frequency spammers lie in the courtroom. Included in the essay is some interesting anecdotal evidence that discusses various situations in which a spammer tried to lie in court and how easily they were found out. It’s also interesting to see how various judges have reacted to the perjury, with some ignoring it completely.

The main point of the article is to explain how spammers are basically liars by nature and that cracking down on their lies in court can help set an example that may just put a dent in the spamming culture. As I’ve said many times on this blog, courts always seem to be a few steps behind technology, and as such, are lagging when it comes to dealing with the negative aspects of the internet. Awareness is key and shedding light on the lies in court is definitely a step in the right direction.

So email spam is obviously a big deal these days. With viagra offers, celebrity nude pics, and Nigerian princes looking for ways to send you millions, our inboxes are filled with what seems like an endless supply of unsolicited garbage. Usually the spam is obvious as it’s generally some automated, poorly written email with very generalized information and from some incredibly bogus person or company. However, sometimes you’ll get these types of emails and they are much better disguised and are from somewhat legitimate companies.

Take for example the following email from Luke at Motive Interactive:

I am contacting you today to find out if you have any available advertising
innovatory on your blog.

Motive Interactive is releasing our next version of our Affiliate Marketing
Network and we
are looking to sponsor your blog with a paid review as well as a 125X125
sponsorship.

Possibly you have some other ideas and I would love to talk with you about
them.

To be clear this is for Motive Interactive to place advertisements on your
blog to promote our company’s new release of our Network.

Thank you for you time,

Luke [last name removed]

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Okay, so it’s probably not a mystery that MySpace is filled with fake profiles, but do you know why those fake profiles exist? Why do people spend the time creating them? Well, with MySpace having such a huge pool of users, it’s the perfect place for some bulk marketing (aka, spamming).

You see, there are a whole lot of internet marketers out there - and I use the term loosely - who are looking for any way possible to spread their links to as many people as possible. These links are usually to affiliate products and websites where the “marketer” gets a cut (either per sale or sometimes per so many visitors). Since MySpace has such a huge userbase and has some marketing friendly features (nameley sending bulletins to friends) it makes for a great source of Web victims.

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