Yesterday, Jason Smathers, the 25-year old former AOL employee who admitted to selling 92 million AOL screen names and email addresses, was sentenced to 15 months in prison. In addition to the jail term the judge also sentenced him to pay restitution of three times the USD $28,000 he sold this data for.
Reports indicate that as many as 7 billion (billion with a “B”) spam emails were sent to this list. AOL says their direct costs may have been $300,000 or more and may be asking for increased damages.
Read the article on Yahoo News.
I was surprised at the jail term since the judge originally stated he thought no crime was committed based on the laws in place at the time of the incident.
Does this scenario really send a message that will deter others from doing this in the future?
Category: Privacy Issues
Let me pose an interesting question to your our ever-faithful One Degree readers:
* If someone on your permission-based e-mail marketing list configures their _old e-mail address which is on your list_ to auto-reply with a message that includes a _new e-mail address you wouldn’t otherwise know_, can you as a marketer safely update your list with this information?
* Would the subscriber expect you to?
* Would you be on solid legal ground in terms of having permission to use this address?
* What might you do to ensure that your subscriber is happy?
* What have you, or would you, personally do in this situation?
Discuss.
Over at “ClickZ”:http://www.clickz.com, Pete Blackshaw’s “Protect the Marketing Commons”:http://www.clickz.com/experts/brand/cmo/article.php/3525681 is definitely worth a read.
Why this matters to Internet marketers: