Sanford Wallace

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Sanford "Spamford" Wallace is a spammer who came to notoriety in 1997, promoting himself as the original Spam King.

1 Career
2 Court cases
3 Retirement from spamming?
4 External links
- 4.1 News articles
- 4.2 Court cases

[edit] Career

In the late 1990s, his company, Cyber Promotions, aka Cyberpromo, was widely blacklisted as a source of unsolicited email. Wallace's high-profile pro-spam stance and unrepentant persistence earned him the derisive nickname 'Spamford'. (Wallace later registered the Internet address spamford.com in spite.)

Prior to his email spam ventures, Wallace had gained notoriety in other questionable marketing circles, as a heavy utilizer of junk fax marketing, a practice outlawed in the U.S. since 1991.

In 1995, Wallace and partner Walt Rines formed Cyber Promotions, entering the spam market. Thanks to a shameless self-marketing campaign, Cyberpromo rapidly became the most successful seller of email marketing -- as well as the number one source of unsolicited email. His activities won him the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize [1].

Wallace's company brought a number of spam-blocking evasion tactics to the fore of the spam battle. False return addresses, relaying, and multihoming were among the questionable practices used by Cyberpromo to ensure the penetration of their advertising. Wallace also spearheaded an early manifestation of astroturfing, using false names to defend the activities of his company.

[edit] Court cases

In 1996, Cyber Promotions sued AOL for blocking its mail, claiming a right under the United States Constitution's First Amendment to speak. A federal court rejected the argument on the basis that AOL's network was private property and AOL was not required to route any piece of mail (as also allowed by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.) This ruling paved the way for modern filtering and blocking policies implemented at the internet service provider level.

Through the late 90s, Cyberpromo was sued by a number of major Internet service providers under claims that the mass of unwanted email coming solely from Cyberpromo had a detrimental effect on their operations. AOL, Compuserve, and EarthLink all received injunctions against Cyberpromo sending email to their networks. In response, Wallace announced plans in 1997 to create a backbone Internet service provider which would explicitly permit spam across its networks.

AGIS, Cyberpromo's primary service provider, under pressure from other backbone providers, eventually decided to pull the plug. Cyberpromo moved its operation to a new service (after winning a lawsuit against AGIS), but the spam lawsuits and growing unpopularity had already begun to take its toll. Negative publicity related to doing business with Cyberpromo took its toll on AGIS, which is now defunct.

[edit] Retirement from spamming?

In April 1998, Wallace publicly announced that he was quitting the spam business. Cyberpromo was converted to an opt-in email marketing company and renamed GTMI. The new company was plagued by minor financial problems, as well as the spectre of its former self, with large numbers of people unconvinced of Wallace's change of heart. Wallace pulled out of the new venture quickly, citing concerns (in some reports) that his return to illegal junk fax operations had failed to provide sufficient funds. GTMI's unshaken legacy eventually led to its rapid demise.

Wallace didn't leave the Internet marketing business entirely, it appears. In 2001 he was linked to a website, passthison.com, which utilized multiple-window launching to snag Web viewers, an advertising practice rarely seen outside of the online pornography industry.

Wallace was also involved in another opt-in project, SmartBotPRO.NET, which is now apparently also defunct.

On 2004-10-08, the FTC filed suit against Wallace and his company, SmartBOT, for infecting computers with spyware then offering a solution to remove the problem for $30. On 2005-01-04, it was announced that Wallace had agreed to stop distributing the software until the charges with the FTC are settled.

On 2006-03-22 the FTC filed a suit [2] again against Wallace and SmartBOT for practices similar to the 2004 suit. This time Wallace and his co-defendands were ordered to pay $4,089,550.48 in fines.