Last Friday, a Virginia court sentenced "the AOL spammer" to a prison term for sending millions of mass e-mail advertisements to AOL members from falsified addresses. Will laws like Virginia's recently instituted anti-spam law -- the U.S.'s most stringent -- stem the tide of spamming and phishing (a practice through which people are lured into giving identity thieves their personal and financial information)? In this installment of "By the Numbers," the Daily looks at the current state of Internet inconveniences.
9 Years in prison North Carolina resident Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced to for his AOL spamming scam
30 Jaynes' age
0 Times before Jaynes' trial that spamming offenses had been considered a felony in court
10 million E-mails sent by Jaynes daily
$750,000 Amount Jaynes made monthly by spamming
$24 million Total amount Jaynes made by spamming
10,000-17,000 Credit card orders Jaynes received each month
$40 Price of the average credit card order he received
$7,500 Amount Jayne's sister was initially fined for her participation in Jaynes' spamming (later, her conviction was overturned)
62% Adult American e-mail users who said last year that they "trust e-mail less" due to spam, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project
53% Adult American e-mail users who say so this year
29% Adult American e-mail users who said last year that because of spam, they're not doing as much e-mailing
23% Adult American e-mail users who said so this year
28% Amount by which the amount of phishing websites on the Internet increased between July 2004 and January 2005
720 Number of the anti-phishing Senate bill that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (a Tufts alum) signed into law last week
The statistics cited above come from the Washington Post, MSNBC, the U.K. Telegraph, the New Mexican, and the Associated Press.
