Spam-A-Friend Lottery Tickets

Email

from the how-very-1998 dept

Back during the first dot com boom years, the “email a friend” option was particularly popular with most new sites, until it quickly turned into the “spam a friend” offering. Most sites have worked to limit the spamming — and many people have finally realized that their friends don’t want to be bombarded by never-ending offers for things they don’t want over email. However, the online lottery service LottoFun (based in South Africa) had a little glitch in their spam-a-friend system. Even worse, since they promised to pay people for each spammed friend that signed up, someone figured out a way to send out more than the 5 friend spam limit the site set up. He actually ended up spamming 8,000 “friends” before the site shut him down. The best part, however, is that the man in question claims that all of those 8,000 people really are his friends, family or “people who have e-mailed him before,” and therefore doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong.