Robert Soloway, one of the world's most notorious senders of junk email, has finally been arrested. The "spam king" -- did he ever actually embrace that title? -- faces charges that he used other people's internet domains, and in effect stole their identities, to mount "zombie" spam blasts. They're known as zombie attacks because the owners of the computers sending the unwanted ads are often unaware that they've been hijacked by spam marketers. According to the Associated Press, Soloway, who persisted in flooding the internet with junk email despite a judgment against him in a civil suit by Microsoft, now faces decades in prison. That seemed harsh -- until I checked my inbox. Spammers are the pedophiles of the internet; they deserve no sympathy.
Is this the most hated man on the web?
Robert Soloway, one of the world's most notorious senders of junk email, has finally been arrested. The "spam king" -- did he ever actually embrace that title? -- faces charges that he used other people's internet domains, and in effect stole their identities, to mount "zombie" spam blasts. They're known as zombie attacks because the owners of the computers sending the unwanted ads are often unaware that they've been hijacked by spam marketers. According to the Associated Press, Soloway, who persisted in flooding the internet with junk email despite a judgment against him in a civil suit by Microsoft, now faces decades in prison. That seemed harsh -- until I checked my inbox. Spammers are the pedophiles of the internet; they deserve no sympathy.
8:46 AM on Thu May 31 2007
By Nick Denton
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