UK Super-Spammer’s Appeal Quashed

By Liam Tung

October 2nd, 2006: Convicted 24 year-old UK super-spammer, Peter Francis-MacRae, who was sentenced to six years jail in late 2005 for operating a A$4 million email-phishing scam, has failed to win an appeal to quash charges of fraud and concealing criminal property.

Besides physical dangers Francis-MacRae posed when he threatened to slit the throats of trading standards officers investigating his activities, this case highlights two key dangers of spam and phishing campaigns to individuals and business - theft from the former and assaults on servers of the latter.

After creating a range of spoofed websites, he promoted these via a spam campaign then sold the fake registration names, which, over a five year period, netted him around A$250,000 per week from duped buyers. When Internet registry group Nominet posted warnings about his operation, he threatened to destroy its servers with a barrage of spam.

The most recent study by US-based Ferris Research indicates that spam costs the world US$50 billion (A$66 billion) primarily in lost worker time. In Ferris’ 2003 report it was estimated the cost of spam for the USA was US$10 billion (A$13 billion), almost doubling by 2005 to US$17 billion (A$22 billion). The cost of sending spam has not increased significantly.

Revealing the seriousness of the problem for Australian business, Commonwealth Bank’s Retail Banking Services Group Executive, Michael Cameron yesterday announced its licensing agreement with Sophos to tackle the spam problem. Mr Cameron said the system had already blocked attempts on NetBank customers.

The impact spam has on businesses is not limited to theft or server threats either; Commonwealth Bank’s announcement of its increased security reveals the efforts Australian organisations are putting into communicating to the public that their online services are safe and secure despite not actually being responsible for spam.

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