Tokyo police have arrested a man for allegedly sending
2.2 billion spam messages, according tonews reports.
The 25-year-old named Yuki Shiina allegedly bought 600,000
e-mail addresses off the internet for £450 and earned over £9,000
from the spam campaign that promoted online gambling and dating
sites.
Police acted after an internet service provider complained about
the volume of spam. It appears that Shiina faked the sender
information on the e-mails in an attempt to avoid detection. This
broke Japanese laws and allowed police to act.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security
software vendor Sophos, said,
"No-one who hears about a single person believed to have sent 2.2
billion spam e-mails can be in any doubt as to the scale of the
problem."
Mark Murtagh, technical director of
Websense, an
internet filtering firm, said 74% of mail aimed at corporate
addresses was spam.