Shane Atkinson, of

Christchurch Christchurch (; ) is the largest city in the South Island and the List of cities in New Zealand, second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand. Christchurch has an urban population of , and a metropolitan population of over hal ...

, New Zealand was a major spammer whose details were leaked onto the Internet soon after an article was written about him in the ''

New Zealand Herald ''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation in New Zealand ...

''. After he was exposed as a spammer in 2003, Shane Atkinson found himself at the receiving end of a barrage of public outrage and proclaimed that he would give up spamming. Atkinson was tracked down by anti-spam collaborators on the

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

news.net-admin

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are not only discussion groups or conversations, but also a repository to publish articles, start ...

s. Before being identified, Atkinson's operation would send up to 100 million messages on a "good day," advertising for penis-enlargement pills. The actual spamming was done by a 15-year-old boy in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, who earned US$500 a day doing so. His web sites were hosted on Polish and

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

i network providers. His brother Lance has also become well-known and was ordered to pay US$2 million to the

authorities for his spamming operations in March 2005.

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...

''On the Trail of the Spammers'' 17 January 2008 An investigation by the BBC broadcast in December 2007 and January 2008 found Atkinson was still active in spamming. Atkinson's

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

was contacted and explained that he was not sending it from his own account but hiding behind a number of other slave or zombie computers, making identification difficult. Simon Cox of the BBC phoned Atkinson in late 2007 and after confirming his identity told him that there were serious allegations about him. He denied them. His reply was Cox put it to him that he was still controlling a network of computers and that he had been sending out spam. Atkinson replied Following on Cox's investigation, New Zealand police at the end of 2007 raided four properties in Christchurch and seized 22 computers. They interviewed two men about illegal spamming and in October 2008 the

Department of Internal Affairs The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA; ) is the public service department of New Zealand charged with issuing passports; administering applications for citizenship and lottery grants; enforcing censorship and gambling laws; registering births, ...

asked the High Court to impose penalties of NZ$200,000 each for breaching the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act On Monday, 22 December 2008 Lance Atkinson was fined NZ$100,000 after the Department of Internal Affairs laid charges under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act. It is understood Atkinson settled out of court. In summing up the judge conceded that the offending started before the act came into force and Atkinson had co-operated with the authorities. Lance now has the dubious honour of being the first person to be fined under the new act. Shane Atkinson and Roland Smits have elected to defend the changes currently before the courts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Atkinson, Shane Living people Email spammers People from Christchurch Year of birth missing (living people)

See also

References