OT: Man gets "spam rage" over penis ad

 Saturday November 22, 04:46 AM

      Man gets "spam rage" over penis ad
      By Adam Tanner


      SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer
programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees
of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising
to enlarge his penis.


      In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made
"road rage" famous, Charles Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and
released on bail for making repeated threats to staff of a Canadian company
between May and July.


      Booher threatened to send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to the
company, to "disable" an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power
drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they
removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.


      He used return e-mail addresses including [EMAIL PROTECTED]


      In a telephone interview with Reuters on Friday, Booher acknowledged
that he had behaved badly but said his computer had been rendered almost
unusable for about two months by a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail.


      "Here's what happened: I go to their Web site and start complaining to
them, would you please, please, please stop bothering me," he said. "It just
sort of escalated ... and I sort of lost my cool at that point."


      The Sunnyvale, California man now faces up to five years in prison and
a $250,000 fine, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for next month on
charges of threatening to injure someone. He said he did not own any guns or
have access to anthrax.


      Booher said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly
downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising
to his computer.


      The object of the Californian's anger was Douglas Mackay, president of
DM Contact Management, which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising
the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement."


      "This went for a long, long time. He seemed really dedicated to this,"
Mackay said from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. "He seemed like a guy
just crazy enough with nothing to lose that might actually do something."


      He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he
said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern
Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement
business.


      In other cases, Internet vigilantes have bombarded spammers with both
unsolicited e-mail and regular mail and phone calls, launched attacks on
spammers' computers and posted spammers' personal information on the
Internet, according to reports.


      Separately, lawmakers in Washington said the U.S. House of
Representatives was poised to vote for on a measure to outlaw most Internet
spam. Lawmakers hope to pass a national anti-spam bill before a much tougher
California state law goes into effect on January 1.