New York teen charged with CAN-SPAM violations, attempted extortion.
A New York man has been arrested and charged with sending out unsolicited instant messages, marking the first known case of criminal action taken against someone accused of sending “spim,” or instant-message spam.
Anthony Greco of Cheektowaga, N.Y., was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Feb. 16 and charged with violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act, after the 18-year-old allegedly sent more than 1.5 million IMs advertising mortgage refinancing services and pornography to users of MySpace.com’s IM service, according to a statement released by U.S. Attorney Debra Yang.
The news comes on the heels of a new survey from Pew Internet & American Life Project that reports that approximately 17 million users have received spim. The Pew telephone survey of 2,200 U.S. adults estimated that 42% of the country’s 134 million online adults use IM.
In fact, real numbers on IM use in the U.S. might be much higher, given that data on the most-avid IM users – those younger than the age of 18 – was not part of the survey, says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
It is too early to tell if spim will become as big a problem as its e-mail cousin, spam. However, IM is an important part of many Internet users’ lives, and marketers likely will figure out a way to use it and get information and sales pitches to consumers, Rainie says.
“This is a target-rich environment that all sorts of actors will figure out how to exploit as the months and years unfold,” he says.
In the U.S. Attorney’s case, authorities allege that, starting in October 2004, Greco fraudulently created thousands of accounts at MySpace, an online community in which members can write blogs, share pictures and send instant messages. Greco sent spim messages from the accounts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement.
The man allegedly contacted MySpace.com and demanded that he be given exclusive rights to send commercial e-mail to MySpace.com users. When MySpace.com did not respond, he threatened to share his technique for sending spim messages to MySpace.com users with the spamming community and “open a Pandora’s box of Spam” on MySpace’s network, the statement said.
The U.S. Secret Service and Los Angeles Police Department’s Electronic Crimes Task Force investigated the case.
Prosecutors are charging Greco with threatening to cause damage to MySpace.com’s computers and with intent to extort, in addition to the CAN-SPAM Act violations. He faces a maximum penalty of 18 years in federal prison if convicted on all three offenses, the U.S. Attorney’s statement said.
Greco’s case might be the first criminal case brought against a spimmer, but it is not the first spim case to make it to the courts. Last October, AOL filed suit against 20 “John Does” in a case that alleged violations of the CAN-SPAM Act for sending bulk IM solicitations over AOL’s Instant Messenger network.
Roberts is a correspondent with the IDG News Service.
