FBI vs. Sanford ‘Spam-King’ Wallace in huge Facebook hack charge

By Richi Jennings (@richi ) – August 5, 2011.

Sanford Wallace, the self-confessed “Spam King,” is back in court. The FBI indicted him last month, and he’s just been bailed. This time he’s facing a shedload of criminal charges — to add to the civil charges of which he’s already been convicted over the years. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers are aghast at the scale of Spamford’s alleged wrongdoing.

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: TBA…

Robert McMillan reports:

Wallace allegedly made money…by driving Web traffic to affiliate marketing companies. … Wallace gained fame as one of spam’s most vocal defenders back in the 1990s…[he] faced numerous civil actions over his activities. … However this is the first time he’s facing criminal charges.
…
…[The] indictment accuses Wallace of…logging onto the social network during an April 2009 Virgin [America] flight from Las Vegas to New York. … He was released Thursday on a $100,000 bond.   

   
Dan Goodin adds:

Sanford Wallace, now 43, first figured out a way to evade Facebook’s spam filters and then…automatically logged in to the accounts he had compromised [to] retrieve a list of all the users’ friends. … He then allegedly posted junk messages on each of the friends’ Facebook walls…[who] were directed to a website that phished their…account credentials, prosecutors said.
…
Wallace surrendered to FBI agents in Las Vegas on Thursday. … The indictment charges Wallace with six counts of fraud…two counts of intentional damage to a protected computer [and] two counts of criminal contempt. … If convicted, he faces a maximum of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each fraud count and 10 years and a $250,000 fine for each intentional damage count.   

Steven Musil adds it up:

If convicted of all charges, Wallace faces nearly 40 years in prison and fines of more than $2 million.
…
Wallace earned the nicknames “Spamford” and “spam king” for his past role as head of CyberPromotions [which sent] as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s. …  In May 2006, Wallace and his company Smartbot.net were ordered by a federal court to turn over $4.1 million.   

Emil Protalinski has frightening stats:

He managed to compromise 500,000 Facebook accounts and fill the social networking website’s servers with 27 million spam messages.   

Meanwhile, Erin Sherbert reveals why it’s really called Sin City:

Wallace, a Las Vegas resident…allegedly sent out more than 30 million junk e-mail [messages] during the 1990s. Before that he was best known for sending out “junk faxes.”
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Wallace has been ordered to return to court in San Jose on Aug. 22 in San Jose. If convicted, he could face more than 10 years in prison.   

  
And Finally…
TBA
  
 
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. He’s the creator and main author of Computerworld’s IT Blogwatch — for which he has won American Society of Business Publication Editors and Jesse H. Neal awards on behalf of Computerworld. He also writes The Long View for IDG Enterprise. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij‘s friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com. You can also read Richi’s full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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Teachers can’t ‘friend’students in Missouri

Missouri students will soon be unfriended by their teachers.

Under a new law that takes effect Aug. 28, teachers in the Show-Me State will no longer be able to “friend” students on popular social networking sites like Facebook. Instructors can still set up public pages or groups to post homework assignments or share resources, but individual friendships or communication will be illegal.

Missouri is the first state in the nation to pass such a law, which was signed into law by Gov. Jay Nixon last month. Dubbed the “Amy Hestir Student Protection Act,” it was inspired by a Missouri student who was molested and assaulted by a junior high school teacher. The bulk of the bill, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Jane Cunningham, deals with preventing sexual abuse of students, more thorough background checks of teachers and district employees and banning registered sex offenders from serving on local school boards.

While agreeing that students need the best possible protections from sexual abuse, critics believe the law will hamstring teachers who want to communicate with students on their 21st century cyberturf.

“The problem is, there is a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of these types of laws and guidelines that make it very hard for a teacher to know what they can or cannot do in the classroom,” said William Stites, a third-grade teacher in Montclair, N.J., and blogger in chief at edsocialmedia.com, which advocates the use of Facebook, Twitter and other technological tools in education.

“They’re going to spend all of this time letting people know what they can and can’t do, and the technology is going to go right past the law.”

The Missouri State Teachers Association vows to fight the social media provisions of the law in the next legislative session, said spokesman Todd Fuller. But the union may face an uphill battle – the bill passed unanimously in the Missouri Senate and was approved with strong bipartisan support in the House. Proponents sold the bill as being necessary to protect students from sexual predators, and the language dealing with social media and websites is confined to three lines near the end of the bill.

The law comes at a time when an increasing number of teachers are relying on Facebook and other online tools to communicate with their students, said Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, which represents more than 100,000 educators nationwide and supports the use of technology in the classroom.

Among other things, Mr. Knezek said many teachers hold “virtual office hours” on Facebook, providing students with homework help for a few hours in the evening or on weekends. Other instructors post news articles or other relevant material on students’ Facebook pages, he said.

“It’s really bothersome to think that you’re taking modern communication and interaction and forbidding teachers from participating in that,” Mr. Knezek said. “You’re causing schools to be one-dimensional.”

Critics of the law admit that there are teachers with bad intentions who may abuse Facebook, Twitter or other sites in dealing with their students. But using those cases as the basis for such a far-reaching law, they argue, is short-sighted.

Mr. Fuller said most Missouri school districts already have policies in place to deal with teacher-student interactions outside the classroom. Leaving those decisions in the hands of local leaders, he added, is the best way to address potential problems.

Proponents counter that teachers are still free to communicate with students via email, since the law only mentions “websites.” But for many of today’s students, email could soon join the abacus and typewriter on the technological scrap heap.

“Students don’t answer email anymore. Email is not cool,” Mr. Fuller said, relaying comments he hears regularly from Missouri teachers. “We have trouble reaching our students through mediums that they feel are ancient.”

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