Spam King Adam Vitale Gets 30 Months

Reuters has reported Adam Vitale, the Spam King of Brooklyn, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for sending over one million unsolicited emails to AOL users in 2005. Government informants posing as a legitimate company hired Vitale to send the spam advertising computer security software in exchange for half of the products profits. Vitale’s network of servers routed the outgoing mail in such a way that AOL’s spam filtering software was rendered useless.

Convictions for sending spam are rare in the United States and practically nonexistent in the rest of the world. In my opinion this is a good step in ensuring interactive advertising is taken seriously. No one wants to receive spam; it cheapens the interactive advertising industry as a whole and blocks out advertisements that customers may actually want to get.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions with a proven ROI for a variety of industries.