Oddly Enough - UK Reuters


Man gets "spam rage" over penis ad
Fri Nov 21, 4:40 PM ET  

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 Booker, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on $75,000 (45,000 pounds) bond for making repeated threats to staff of an unnamed Canadian company between May and July, the U.S. Attorney's office for Northern California said on Friday. 


Booker 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. 


In a telephone interview with Reuters, Booker 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." 


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


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


Booker identified the object of his rage as Albion Medical, which claims to produce the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement." 


The company's Web site does not provide any telephone numbers for contact. 


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 could vote as early as Friday 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.