70% drop in spam after hosting firm closed
The closure of a web hosting firm that is believed to have had spam gangs as clients has led to a drastic reduction in junk mail. Two US internet service providers have pulled the plug on the firm McColo following an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper. Anti-spam firm Ironport has seen junk mail levels drop by 70% since McColo was taken offline on 11 November. But, it warned, it will be a temporary respite from the menace of spam.
“It is an unprecedented drop but will be a temporary outage as the networks move from North America to places where there is less scrutiny,” said Jason Steer, a spokesman for Ironport. The Washington Post has been gathering data on McColo for the past four months and passed the information to its internet service providers, Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric. Both decided to pull the plug on the firm on Tuesday. It is believed that it hosted gangs running botnets – networks of computers that have been taken over by criminals to send malicious software and spam. According to MessageLabs, botnets are responsible for over 90% of spam.
Source: BBC
Comments(23)
thanks martin!
….ah I almost forgot: “you can lick my balls”
I’d say that it was unfortunate this is actually a problem, but what is more unfortunate is how many people are susceptible to spammers when the prerequisite only really requires that one is not an idiot. It really isn’t difficult to stay spam and virus-free.
From Hotel California -
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’
why they took away my fav spam providers – some of us might really liked it, thats not fair -_-’
@4
is that suppose to be funny?
Spammers
Telephone cold callers
Junk mail through the letter box.
It’s about time that put a stop to all of this stuff.
Well I can dream can’t I….
I say: Spammers GO to hell
Easy way to stop spam: Dont fall for that crap.
anyone for cheap viagra?
Sometimes you just can’t stop spam, even if you are very careful. I did a test a while back where I setup brand new email addresses and signed up (created an account) to a certain website with each new email address (i.e. 1 email address for one site). I did this with the likes of Microsoft, Google, Blackberry and about 50 others, some less known ones. I found that about 30% of these reputable company sign-ups lead to spam being received in the associated email address. Blackberry was one of these sites that lead to spam.
So, even if you are careful to where you give your email address to, there is a chance that it will be got and sent spam.
makes u wonder y RlsLog ask for email… enyone ever give it? I just got a letter Saying it was from abby national asking to go online and update my personal information. im not even with that bank.
http://www.imageflux.net/uploads/4500051189971601359.jpg
@ 11 a
Thanks not good.
The problem with these sorts of scammers is they seem to be above the law.
Online fraud & such crimes are given very low priority (especially here in the UK)
They say it’s because we lack the skills and resources to deal with such crimes.
So they only thing we can do is be ‘extra carefully’ who we give our personal info to.
Damn that was nasty meat…………TFIG
Now that that big spam site has closed, RLSLOG has moved up from second to first place! (Yes, this is a joke about your highly annoying ads and spyware that populate your site, RLSLOG. Thanks to adblock I don’t contribute to this site making a profit off of bootlegged movies and cracked games).
Spammers Spam because it makes money. Plain and simple. Companies are willing to have thier spam sent out, and they pay companies like McColo to send the spam out. The only way to end spam permanently is
1) If you recieve spam from an actualy company, go to thier website (not via the email, find it yourself) and send them 10 or 20 messages yourself. This costs them money. If the spam generates no legitimate traffic, and costs them money in manpower from the complaints, they wont do it again.
2) Learn to recognize spam. Delete it. This makes the spam innefective, which makes it a bad busines decision.
3) (this is only for those that understand the implications). Participate in a bombing campaign. If you get spam, find the spammers URL, and bomb thier website for a few GB’s of data. If a few thousand people do this, you may just cost them more money than they make from the spam campaign. You might even shut down thier website. I’ve shut down a website in the past (but he had a crappy host)
Holy christ, 70% of the spam came from there? what was their office like, the gateway to hell or something?
Wait, so this email I got to help a Nigerian Prince isn’t real???
No punishment, so why fear it?
Imagine if the MINIMUM fine was 1 million dollars per spam mail and 15 years jail without parole.
Then you would see a 99% drop in Spam in America. However, in America we favor the criminals and punish the victims every time.
u guys talk only about spam , but thats only a small thing compared to what they were into:
“The badness attributed to McColo was not limited to spam. It included child pornography sites; sites that accepted payment for spam and child porn; rogue anti-virus Web sites; and a huge malicious software operation that apparently stole banking and credit card data from more than a half million people worldwide.”
if they penalized the advertisers that would chnage a lot.
@18,
it’s real. but never help a negro! just like never trust a russian!
welp, 12 days later, and their back
It’s been a nice quiet 12 days though!