Spammer’s Porsche Draws A Crowd

America Online said its members have submitted more than one million AOL screen names in the Internet company's drawing for a spammer's seized sports car.

AOL members are racing to take the wheel of a Porsche Boxster S convertible by speeding onto the AOL service to enter a unique sweepstakes.

Since the unprecedented AOL promotion was launched on Tuesday, March 30th, over one million AOL screen names have now been entered by members for a chance to win the special car, making this one of the most popular sweepstakes in the history of AOL. The one million milestone was reached this morning.

At one point during the first 24 hours of the sweepstakes, entries were being processed at the rate of several hundred per minute. The sweepstakes has also generated 3 million pageviews of the sweepstakes promotion in just over 8 days, after being showcased on the AOL “Welcome Screen”.

Last week, AOL announced that the Company had confiscated a luxury Porsche sports car from a major spammer who AOL caught thanks to members reporting spam. AOL seized the car at the successful conclusion of a legal action taken against the spammer. Now, AOL is offering the car to a lucky member in an online sweepstakes as a gesture of support and thanks to its members for their cooperation in the fight against spam.

“One million members entered into this sweepstakes is also one million reasons for spammers to take note,” said Randall Boe, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of AOL. “This program is an incredible display of the cooperation that exists between AOL and our members when it comes to battling junk email, and it shows that members are clearly keen to fight back against spammers. The success of this sweepstakes is also a result of the tremendous power of members using the ‘Report Spam’ button to accomplish two critical goals: first, help rid their inbox of junk email; and second, help us find the outlaw spammers, catch them, and potentially take away the houses that spam built and the cars that spammers drive.”

The spammer’s sports car AOL is giving away to a member is a fully-loaded 2002 Porsche Boxster S Cabriolet 2-door, with a 3.2-liter, 250-horsepower engine, manual transmission, seal grey metallic exterior and tan leather interior, CD-player, Bose music system, and Sport package.