The head of what has been referred to as a “vast international spam network” has been ordered to pay a £10m by US courts this week.

Lance Atkinson from New Zealand and Jody Smith from the US have sent of literally billions of emails attempting to sell products such as prescription drugs and various weight loss pills. The courts have ruled their emails illegal and have accused the group of “deceptively marketed” emails.

The investigation by the Federal Trade Commission has been doing on for quite some time. The gang had used a ‘botnet’ – a network of globally attached computers that were hijacked to send out spam emails – to get their messages into the inboxes of millions of people across the world.

The drugs detailed on the emails were actually sent from India and were both unapproved and potentially unsafe – much of the reason why they were much cheaper than regular medication in America. The gang had also lied about the payment methods, telling customers they were using secure encryption when they were doing no such thing.

It’s a blow for spam on the internet, but it’s worth nothing that the laws that actually brought about the fine had nothing to do with actually sending out the emails themselves but instead with trading standards and laws surrounding fake pharmaceuticals in the US.

The gang had been active since around 2005 and at the height of their activity were believed that have accounted for nearly a third of all the spam sent across the entire world.

Estimates for the amount of emails that are actually spam range between 80% and 98% depending on which organisation you ask. Many countries still don’t have adequate legal protection in place to deal with such spammers.


Written by: Suzanna, who runs a website about Local SEO