As reported in a January 18th Sophos press release, the owner of a Japanese online dating site has been arrested for sending 5.4 billion emails to promote the website.
“Japanese authorities arrested 47-year-old Yoshimitsu Hirono, president of Tokyo-based dating website Takumi Tsushin, along with three other suspects. Approximately 90 million spam emails a day are said to have been sent promoting the site over a two month period” and according to reports, the four men have admitted the allegations against them.
Hirono and the other men are said to have remotely used a bank of 128 computers located in China’s Heilongjiang province in order to send the spam messages.
Ros comments: Hmmm… wouldn’t that be a great list to have to promote Asia FriendFinder? 
But as Mr. Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said, “Companies need to know that by spamming they could find themselves drawing attention from the international law enforcement agencies, and end up with a unpleasant date in court.”
Unpleasant indeed. Think ‘jail’ the next time you’re feeling inclined to move away from your honest efforts to build a list.
About Rosalind Gardner
Rosalind, shouldn’t we all activate the DOUBLE opt-in feature on our auto responder accounts? If not, can’t ANYONES e-mail address be stuck into our opt-in form, and suddenly we’d be sending some unsuspecting person our newsletters and offers?
You don’t use the DOUBLE opt-in function, there must be a good reason you take this chance, no?
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your comment and yes, that’s the risk you take when you don’t use double opt-in.
And yes, I do indeed use double opt-in on the NPT list.
Cheers,Ros