Britain Revealed as World Spam Capital

A story from the Sunday Times that looks at the case of Brett Sandiford, revealed as Britain’s number one spammer and admits to sending out 20m e-mails a year.

“E-criminals”, says the story, “Take advantage of new broadband technology to infiltrate spamming software into computers, often in private homes. These “zombie” machines then generate the spam messages without the owner’s knowledge.”

City insiders say that banks, online casinos and betting services based in Britain have paid out more than £80m to extortionists rather than have their systems put out of commission.

The story ends by saying that “Simon Moores, the managing director of Zentelligence Research and a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ working group on economic crime, said it had become more effective for criminal gangs to target the internet than to sell cocaine.”