May 27 2008
Spammers: Walter Rines
Continuation of Who are the Biggest Spammers series:
Next up is Walter Rines (common typo Walter Rimes) because of the recent case he lost again Myspace, to the sum of $230 million.
MySpace sued him and Sanford Wallace (long time partners) for having sent as many as 30 million spam messages per day during a period of time in the 1990s. They spammed MySpace by creating their own accounts and stealing the passwords of others. They then went on to mass message users an estimated 735,925 times.
This isn’t the first time Walter Rines has been part of a lawsuit. Another big suit was filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against him and his company, Odysseus Marketing, in October of 2005 tied to spyware (it was settled in 2006). In 2008 he had trouble with FTC again due to them asking the judge in the spyware case to find Wallace and Rines in contempt for violating their 2006 agreement.
These two might want to part company and find new healthier endevours, they keep getting into trouble.
In 1998 Wallace and Rines attempted to launch a company that would provide users with low-cost Internet service in exchange for agreeing to receive spam. But Wallace and Rines’ Spambone idea died when their company, GTMI, couldn’t find a big networking firm willing to provide bandwidth. With a flourish, Wallace announced his retirement from spamming in 1998.
Walter Rines said a disclaimer at Kazanon.com, the main site where he was distributing his Trojan horse program, acknowledged that “adware” was being installed on users’ computers. He admitted that he was operating in a legal “grey area.”
Not worthy of a Wikipedia article yet (unlike his partner Sanford Wallace, who I will be doing next) but here are some links:
Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines in trouble with FTC again
MySpace wins $230 million anti-spam judgment
