Former AOL Employee Admits Selling Stolen Email Addresses

In news that would come as an embarrassment to the Internet giant America Online, one of its ex-employee pleaded guilty in court on Friday on the charges of stealing email addresses (or AOL Handles) and selling them for money to a spammer. Reports said that the accused stole a massive 92 million e-mail screen names while he was working in AOL.

The accused is 24 years old Jason Smathers and he pleaded guilty to the charges of conspiracy and interstate trafficking of stolen property. These charges carry a maximum punishment of prison sentence of 24 months under federal guidelines. As per information available, the spammer paid him a sum of around USD 28,000 for this stolen information.

Later these mail ids were used for online spamming to promote spammer’s online gambling operation. Later on, the spammer further sold the information to more spammers, which in the end led to mass scale spamming on the AOL customers.

Courts have delayed the sentencing date to May 20. AOL would perhaps now reconsider how much power their employees have when they are working in areas where they can access the AOL user base…