Shane Atkinson

Shane Atkinson, of Christchurch, New Zealand was a major spammer whose details were leaked onto the Internet soon after an article was written about him in the New Zealand Herald. After he was exposed as a spammer in 2003, Shane Atkinson found himself at the receiving end of a barrage of public outrage and proclaimed that he would give up spamming.

Atkinson was tracked down by anti-spam collaborators on the Usenet news.net-admin newsgroups. Before being identified, Atkinson's operation would send up to 100 million messages on a "good day,"

An investigation by the BBC broadcast in December 2007 and January 2008 found Atkinson was still active in spamming. Atkinson's Internet service provider was contacted and explained that he was not sending it from his own account but hiding behind a number of other slave or zombie computers, making identification difficult. Simon Cox of the BBC phoned Atkinson in late 2007 and after confirming his identity told him that there were serious allegations about him. He denied them. His reply was quote|"Well, it wasn’t me, mate. We have closed all that down years ago."

On Monday, 22 December 2008 Lance Atkinson was fined NZ$100,000 after the Department of Internal Affairs laid charges under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act. It is understood Atkinson settled out of court. In summing up the judge conceded that the offending started before the act came into force and Atkinson had co-operated with the authorities. Lance was the first person to be fined under the act. Shane Atkinson and Roland Smits initially elected to defend the changes before agreeing to pay the NZ$ 100,000 fine in 2009.