In-box bust: Arrest unlikely to slow spam

Ways to Reduce spam

¢ Avoid displaying your e-mail address in public. This includes newsgroup postings, chat rooms or Web sites.

¢ Check the privacy policy when you submit your address to a Web site.

¢ Read and understand the entire form before you transmit personal information through a Web site.

¢ Consider using two e-mail addresses – one for personal messages and one for newsgroups and chat rooms.

¢ Use an e-mail filter to flag potential spam or channel it into a bulk e-mail folder.

Source: ftc.gov

New York ? Junk e-mail continued to land in mailboxes around the world Thursday, despite the arrest a day earlier of a man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers.

Even if Robert Alan Soloway is ultimately convicted and his operations shuttered, spam experts say dozens are in line to fill the void.

“In the short term, the effect it’s going to have is more symbolic more than anything else,” said John Levine, co-author of “Fighting Spam for Dummies.” “Soloway is a large spammer, but hardly the only large spammer.”

Levine said Soloway was a good target because he operates in the U.S. and has taken few steps to cover his tracks.

Soloway, 27, was once on a top 10 list of spammers kept by The Spamhaus Project, an international anti-spam organization.

Others have since topped him, mostly based in Russia and other countries out of reach of U.S. or European law.

But Soloway remains on a Spamhaus list of about 135 spammers deemed responsible for as much as 80 percent of all junk e-mail, and one Spamhaus official considers him in the top 20.

Soloway was arrested Wednesday on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Prosecutors say Soloway has sent millions of junk e-mails since 2003 and continued after Microsoft Corp. won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005.

Soloway could face decades in prison.