Former AOL Employee Who Stole Entire E-Mail List Sentenced to Year and

[steve2470]

Three Months in Prison (rest of headline)

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBPF76KKCE.html


NEW YORK (AP) - A 25-year-old former America Online employee who admitted he became a cyberspace "outlaw" when he sold all 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses to spammers was sentenced Wednesday to a year and three months in prison.

"I know I've done something very wrong," the soft-spoken and teary eyed Jason Smathers told U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein as he apologized for a theft that resulted in spammers sending out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mails.

"The Internet is not lawless" was the lesson of the case, said Assistant U.S. Attorney David Siegal.

"The public at large has an interest in making sure people respect the same values that apply in everyday life, on the Internet," Siegal said.

<snip>

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. The year + a few days is critical

This is no longer a misdemeanor, and stays on his record forever.

[Blue_Tires]

2. but the sentence still seems lacking n/t

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. during travels in the USSR I spent a day in jail

Believe me, even in a nice cell like Judith Miller has, any time is extremely unpleasant.

[benito]

4. and just think

that nice lady brought her famouth apple crumb cake and everything!

[Ian David]

5. As soon as he gets out, I want his email address!

Muhahahahaha!

[axollot]

6. I worked for the devil.......

.......AoHELL, and whoopsies, one day some twit in Dulles sent an email to ALL employee's and forgot to BCC it. I shipped it off to my home email addy for a couple of reasons.

The first one was so I could remember a few of my mates that had moved to other areas in the company and it was an easy way to contact them again.

The second reason was to give to some asshole to try and phish internal accounts. (the computer newbs they hired the last 3 years I was there were ALL hacked at one point too by phishing....the rest of us laughed our asses off at them for being so dumb and falling for the poorly written and executed phishing letters -- even when I was a newb I never fell for that crap! Sort of taught Aohell boss's a lesson in hiring total computer idiots! Though it didn't stop them sadly. And ya know I would not have cared if they hired computer idiots, if they gave them CORRECT TRAINING! But real training ended and the focus became customer service ONLY - then it was outsourced anyway... even those of us that did do training we were not allowed to teach them REAL fixes for things if it was not in the BOOK that is how lame it became!)

Now I am no spammer - but these were top level names + all the other shit kickers there. It was my revenge card for when they would eventually fire me (which the did because "MY" job was outsourced and I do not do retention or telemarketing).

In the end I had done nothing with the names except send them on to a few other friends who had gotten canned for stupid shit.

We were all techs - not the lamer techs, the real had to have knowledge techs hired many years before the merger.
The company screwed so many of us over when they merged with TW, then outsourced us and made techs become sales. Techs make shitty phone sales reps.

Because we were in Florida, they could fire you without a decent reason - ya know the right to work state and all.
I never had cause to want to do evil shit to the customers, but the 'brass' that is a different story.

My other motive was to get revenge on the twit that put all the internal names and "oopsing" the BCC part - he should have been the fucker outsourced......

In the end I did nothing with the info besides pass it on to other former employee's - what they did with it is anyones guess.
This was years ago so it is not the same situation.

Oh more joyous news, I got a letter the other day that said my private information and thousands of others, customers and ex-employees alike had data that was stored on hard disks transported to some location in Orlando STOLEN. Of course they reassured me in the letter a billion times that 'they' had no reason to believe it was used for nefarious reasons or that it was used at all....but it had supposedly and I QUOTE!! "fell off the truck during transport".
Fucking AOHELL FOR YA!

Their program for keeping peoples screen names, address' and payment methods have been hacked into numerous times - even the newest system!! Luckily, the entire cc number is NOT accessible by ANYONE nor is the password. In fact if I had a "i forgot my password" call, we could not give the old one.......simply reset it to a new one.

Before they took over TW the company had somewhat of a soul and gave a shit about its people - that was steve case's doing. Once he became a figure head only and not in any real charge did the entire place turn to SHIT. Now TW doesn't even want to be known as TW/AOL and is back to TW only. roflmao!
Case was the bomb back in the day - he gave REAL leather jackets, money, good bonus's, real nice stuff for xmas etc. After TW - all employees were treated like crap.
SAD