`Weaselboy` stands trial

'Weaselboy' properly known as Peter Francis-Macrae is currently on trial in Cambridgeshire for allegedly making death threats against Trading Standards, and incredibly, the Police. Allegedly a prolific spammer, so notorious he became the only UK resident to appear on The Spamhaus Project's Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) list. He is thought to have perpetrated scams that earned him in excess of £1.5 million. One such scam is said to have offered pre-registrations for the forthcoming .eu domain with a guarantee of success, via unsolicited mail - whereas the bogus operation 'EU Registry Services' which offered the service was not actually a registrar, accredited or otherwise. Another alleged scam involved the solicitation of renewals of expiring domain names. Nominet won an injunction back in November 2003, preventing Francis-Macrae from using its Whois database. Curiously EURid, the top level registry for the .eu, chose to avoid confronting Francis-Macrae, as previous attempts to challenge him had resulted in bombardments of emails, a type of denial of service attack. Worringly this demonstrates the power of spam. One scheme apparently earned Francis-Macrae nearly £200,000 within a few weeks. It appears most of the money was spent on designer clothing and "helicoptor lessons." This tale clearly demonstrates the importance of always using a reputable accredited registrar such as Weycrest to register domains To read a BBC article on this story, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4334948.stm.