The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood Nj, yesterday Ridgewood residents received spam texts from number 862-500-9892 and someone named Cory (Democratic Operative?) on behalf Mayor Paul VAGIANOS, Deputy Mayor Pam PERRON, and Bee Man Frank MORTIMER . One resident asked, “Have you heard if any restricted phone distribution lists were used to obtain my, and anyone else’s phone number?”
Continue reading Ridgewood Residents Hits With SPAM Texts on Election Eve
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
During Coronavirus we must take silver linings where we can. A new study shows during the pandemic, spam phone calls – a non-medical epidemic – have declined 55% nationally with some states seeing as high as a 76% decrease.
Continue reading Study Shows Spam Call Epidemic in Decline During Coronavirus Pandemic
DECEMBER 15, 2015, 11:55 AM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2015, 12:07 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEWARK — Three men were charged Tuesday in a computer hacking and spamming scheme that federal prosecutors in New Jersey said compromised the personal information of 60 million people and netted more than $2 million in profits.
Timothy Livingston, 30, of Boca Raton, Florida, operated a business known as A Whole Lot of Nothing that sent spam emails on behalf of clients including insurance companies and online pharmacies, charging $5 to $9 for each spam email that resulted in a completed transaction, according to authorities.
In addition to Livingston, the indictment charged Tomasz Chmielarz, 32, of Rutherford, New Jersey; and Devin McArthur, 27, of Ellicott City, Maryland, with conspiracy to commit fraud and related activity in connection with computers and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Livingston and Chmielarz also were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and related activity in connection with electronic mail.
Feds: Hackers stole 1 billion email addresses in spam scheme
MARCH 6, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015, 3:44 PM
WIRE SERVICE
The Associated Press
ATLANTA – Computer hackers stole a whopping 1 billion email addresses from U.S. marketing companies in what federal authorities Friday described as a massive spam scheme.
Three people were indicted on federal charges in what John Horn, the acting U.S. attorney based in Atlanta, called “one of the largest reported data breaches in United States history.” He said they netted $2 million in commissions from millions of spam emails that routed recipients to websites selling software and other products.
That means the defendants would have averaged just a fraction of a penny for each of the stolen email addresses.
Still, authorities said the case is significant because of the scale of the information stolen. Horn said hackers targeted marketing companies that send bulk emails to customers of their commercial clients. They gained access to the firms’ computer systems by sending emails with hidden malware to the marketing companies’ employees.
The hackers not only stole hundreds of millions of email addresses, Horn said, but they also succeeded in using the marketing firms’ own systems to send the hackers’ spam messages.
One of the defendants, 25-year-old Vietnamese citizen Giang Hoang Vu, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud before a federal judge last month. He has not been sentenced.
