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06.09.06
Microsoft Hits Spammer For $1 Million
 By
David Utter
Settlements between one of the world's worst spammers, and plaintiffs Microsoft
and the state of Texas, will cost Ryan Pitylak at least a million dollars.
Pitylak had been known as one of the most offensive of a noxious breed of spammers. MSNBC reported how he had been tagged by the Spamhaus Project as one of the worst spammers in the world.
The May settlement with Microsoft meant Pitylak had to promise not to send out "false, misleading or unsolicited commercial e-mails" ever again. His operation had been excreting 25 million emails a day to inboxes at its height of operations in 2004.
His efforts allowed Pitylak to acquire a BMW and a house worth about $430,000. Those will have to be sold to satisfy the settlements Pitylak has agreed to as well as his legal bills.
Now, Pitylak has said he will join the anti-spam community and help others fight the plague of spam. On his blog, Pitylak noted he is already working with one major ISP to help it deal with its spam problem.
Parts of a 2004 story that appeared in The Statesman about Pitylak may be found in a blog post at the Off the Kuff website. Apparently, Pitylak has had a long history of "Internet marketing":
Pitylak was 14 and living in Ann Arbor, Mich., when he created in 1997 what appears to have been his first Internet marketing scheme, according to a Google search. His e-mail pitch, for a company he called Gates Computer Systems, offered advertisers the chance to buy ads on a Web site for $79 per month.
By 2002, Pitylak had expanded his business: That year, anti-spam watchdog groups began tracing his name attached to the registrations for numerous Internet sites responsible for distributing spam marketing offers.
With a partner, Mark Trotter, Pitylak set up a company called PayPerAction LLC and, under that name, registered more than 200 other aliases for the company with the Texas secretary of state.
Instead of being part of a lucrative problem, he claims he will now be part of the solution. He even posted a follow-up to the Off the Kuff post about it.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer with WebProNews. |
