AOL employee charged for stealing screen names.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends & analysis

A 24-year-old America Online (AOL) software engineer was recently arrested on federal charges that he hacked into the company's computers to steal 92 million e-mail addresses that were later sold and used to bombard AOL members with spam.

Jason Smathers is accused of illegally obtaining the e-mail addresses of nearly all of AOL's customers in May 2003. Smathers allegedly sold the names for $100,000 to Sean Dunaway, who ran an Internet gambling business in Las Vegas, according to prosecutors. Dunaway then sold the list of 92 million names to unidentified spammers, who used it early this year to send millions of e-mails peddling herbal enhancement products, according to a criminal compliant filed in a New York federal court. Dunaway, who was also arrested, sold the names in 26 separate blocks, one for each letter of the alphabet, for $52,000, authorities said.

Smathers, who had worked at AOL since 1999, obtained other AOL member information as well, including telephone numbers, zip codes, and types of credit cards used by members, though not credit card numbers, according to the complaint. AOL said those numbers are...