Sanford Wallace

Sanford Wallace (* 1968 ) is an American mass senders of spam - emails . He has been notorious in the Internet community since he called himself the "Spam King" in 1997 and staged it accordingly.

Life

In the late 1990s, Cyber ​​Promotions , aka Cyberpromo , was widely frowned upon as a source of unsolicited e-mail. Because of his attitude towards spam and his persistence, he earned the nickname "Spamford", derived from his first name. He later registered the domain spamford.com .

Prior to his career as an email spammer, Wallace was already familiar with other questionable marketing methods, such as: For example, faxing by sending commercials is known as "junk fax" and has been banned in the United States since 1991.

After numerous lawsuits against him and the associated fines, he most recently made headlines with the judgment of a US federal district court in Los Angeles , through which the Internet forum operator MySpace claimed damages of US $ 230 million against him and Walter Rines, who is also known for spam activities as well as others. Wallace alone is responsible for a portion of the claim amounting to 158.9 million US dollars.

chronology

Wallace entered the spam market in 1997 with the establishment of Cyber ​​Promotions . Thanks to a self -marketing campaign , Cyber ​​Promotions quickly became the most successful seller in the form of email marketing and achieved a top position in terms of the number of unsolicited emails. Because of his activities Wallace received the Ig Nobel Prize in 1997 in the field of communication. Wallace announced in 1998 that it was leaving the spam business. The company Cyber promo was immersed in an opt-in transformed E-mail marketing firm and Global Technology Marketing Incorporated (GTMI) renamed. The new company was plagued by financial problems and a bad reputation due to its history, including widespread by people who did not believe in Wallace's change of heart. He then left GTMI immediately, which led to the company's rapid dissolution. After his Internet connection was blocked in 1999 to prevent his spam activities, Wallace initiated a lawsuit against the anti-spam activist Mark Welch , which he himself ended a month later.

In 2001, Wallace re-established the website passthison.com for Internet advertising , this time with so-called pop-ups . He was also involved in the SmartBotPRO.net project , which is apparently no longer operated in the meantime. Since SmartBot a spyware common and at the same time that offered software to remove for $ 30, which rose FTC 2004 suit against Wallace and his company. The distribution of the SmartBotPRO.net software was prevented in 200 until the fees were settled with the FTC. SmartBot was sued in 2006 for a fine of $ 4,089,550.48. In the 2008 trial against him and his business partner Walter Rines and others, a US district court awarded MySpace $ 234 million in damages. This is the highest penalty that a US court has ever imposed under the US anti-spam law CAN-SPAM . In the 2009 trial against him, a US federal district court awarded Facebook in damages of $ 711 million.

Cyber ​​Promotions company

Wallace's Cyberpromo company succeeded in developing tactics to circumvent so-called spam filters or blockers, such as the use of fake sender addresses, relaying and multihoming . In this way, the successful delivery of the advertising e-mails could be ensured again despite the use of these defense mechanisms. Wallace also led rallies in the form of astroturfing and using false names to defend his company's operations.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Court ruling: $ 230 million in compensation for MySpace for spam flood . Spiegel Online , May 14, 2008
2. ↑ https://www.stern.de/digital/online/angriff-auf-myspace-230-millionen-dollar-strafe-fuer-spam-koenig-3860600.html
3. ↑ Harvard University Gazette, October 16, 1997 ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Facebook awarded $ 711 million in case against spammers . In: Los Angeles Times , October 30, 2009