Open Salon Bloggers, Rejoice! The King is Busted!
Oleg Nikolaenko, King of Spam
At least we have something to be happy about this holiday season:
According to court documents and FBI affidavits, Oleg Nikolaenko is the man responsible for stuffing your e-mail inbox with special deals for pills that fight ED, those ugly uggs, Nigerian princesses, and a host of other useless junk and pipe dreams.
Oleg is scheduled for arraignment in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin court on Monday. The FBI has documents proving that Oleg was the mastermind for developing "Mega-D" the largest botnet in the world. Mega-D is responsible for creating 32% of the world's spam mail. It is capable of sending out an estimated 10 billion spam email messages a day. That's a lot of spam.
Hopefully, what this means to us in Open Salon is that we will not be getting those pesky "I saw your profile" PMs. Also, our personal email inboxes won't be burdened with so much spam.
However, like the "War on Drugs", when you get one spam kingpin, 50 others will spring up. On the bright side if this guy talks (which he will; the FBI has very persuasive methods; plus I'm sure he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison with a 300# lbs guy named Barbie), spam killers will be able to find better ways to combat spam by understanding how they work.
Here is the full story from CNN:
Man allegedly responsible for one-third of your email spam arraigned.
Updates: I just added these links for more background on the story:
Russian King of Spam nabbed by Milwaukee FBI
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Comments
What did he do for the rest of the day?
{[R]}
What a waste... I wonder what that adds up to in dollars.
I can dream......
Rated
Bonnie, and write a book about it too which will sell millions. He'll even on Oprah.
I found this:
Every year or two, Ferris Research updates its estimates for the total cost of spam. Here are our 2009 estimates:
Worldwide, spam will cost us all $130 billion; in the U.S. alone, $42 billion. That’s a 30% increase over our 2007 estimates, which themselves were a 100% increase over our 2005 figures.
That's a lot of spam.
It's been estimated that nine out of ten email messages sent today are spam. As others have noted, that's a huge burden on our machines and our time.
Rob St. Amant, it could clear this country's financial woes.
Oh.. now that I was getting used to it....
But... this weekend I haven´t done one.. not a single one... coooool ya
Rated
Mauricio, no. The spambots keep coming. The covert OS spam killers will still be on duty. ; )
little willie, you might have something.
Well done, Trudge.
Kanuk, most likely, you are right; the arrest won't affect the infestation of spam on OS.
Scanner, I', sure they'll be others.
Something
Posing
As
Meat.
The King and the Father. Hmmmmmmm.
Rated with hugs
Boanerges Redux, most likely not. We're being attacked from a different front.
mhold, kinda of biblical. Now they need the son.
Linda, he's under thirty.
Spam has been a problem since the first day some fellow turned on the first computerized email, it was like, "POWERING ON....hey, I already got a message!! 'Hello my name is Ling, I saw your profile on the bulletin board....' :D
Kimberly, no it ain't.
And Oleg!!
Hi Tink, love ya!! Teehee!!
Monkey rated!!!
R