Email spam drops by 75% after just one website is closed

[6souls]

Online junk mail has been slashed by 75 per cent after a company believed to host some of the world's largest internet spam gangs was shut down.

Two major internet service providers (ISPs) cut off internet access to the company McColo.com on Tuesday. Carole Theriault, of internet security firm Sophos called it an 'unprecedented' move.

It is believed the California-based company had a client list that included some of the world's largest cyber-criminal gangs who bombarded computers with unwanted messages.

Online security firms estimated that spam rates fell up to 75 per cent shortly after the company's servers were disconnected.

Although the levels have picked up again, the drop is being seen as strong evidence that a significant slice of the world's spam was coming from McColo.

'McColo Corp had a number of criminal organisations they were turning a blind eye to,' Jason Steer, product manager at IronPort, told vnunet.com.

'It was responsible for spam but lots as other things as well, even down to the level of child pornography.'

However, Steer does not believe that the shutdown will affect spam in the long term, saying that spammers will find other outlets.

Spam accounts for about 90 per cent of all e-mails send to computers around the world. U.S researchers recently found that spammers could turn a healthy profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5million emails they send.

The McColo web page is currently down, but the company can go online again if they find another willing ISP.

Email spam drops by 75% worldwide after just one website is closed | Mail Online

[Resin]

Damn, what do you know? I just did a check of a few of my clients' spam statistics and they're all at lows for received spam mail. Pretty cool, but only a matter of time before it ramps up again, no?

[Mizango]

Heard about this this morning at work. Pretty neat.

[0ni0n]

prosecute those fuckers.

[Katlan]

Awsome, they won't be missed! Even w/no scripts, my anti-spam protection software that I run weekly, ect... I still get at least one spam email a day.

[Senoska]

Awsome, they won't be missed! Even w/no scripts, my anti-spam protection software that I run weekly, ect... I still get at least one spam email a day.

1-2 a week here.

[Khamsin]

My hotmail gets about 1 per week, my gmail never gets spam. My yahoo is nothing but spam, but that's because that's what I sign up for stuff
with. I'll have to check and see if it went down, if it was mostly coming from McColo.

My comcast email gets an inordinant amount of spam, yet I never use or sign up for anything with it. You'd think they could implement a better spam filter.

[Kerberoz]

gmail's been pretty amazing with spam control for me... think I've gotten like 1 in the last 3 months

[Katlan]

gmail's been pretty amazing with spam control for me... think I've gotten like 1 in the last 3 months

I'd love to use gmail, but it doesn't push emails to your phone and that's the only way I get stuff. After being spoiled w/the "push" service, hard to need to go back and manually check for mail

[Tricen]

Wow, wtf. I was almost tempted to make my penis bigger/more ejaculation per sqr lbs.

[Vandalhart]

Wish I could find a way to stop these annoying pop-ups that keep popping up on my Trillian. I have it st to block all messages from people not on my list, but it doesn't seem to stop anything.

[Demosthenes11]

Spam accounts for about 90 per cent of all e-mails send to computers around the world. U.S researchers recently found that spammers could turn a healthy profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5million emails they send.

/starts spam business

[Kerberoz]

I'd love to use gmail, but it doesn't push emails to your phone and that's the only way I get stuff. After being spoiled w/the "push" service, hard to need to go back and manually check for mail

Eh? Gmail works with push

[Khamsin]

Eh? Gmail works with push

Really? How? I only have the option for Fetch on my iPhone.

[Katlan]

Eh? Gmail works with push

Really? How? I only have the option for Fetch on my iPhone.

Can't tease us like that w/o explaining how

[Kerberoz]

Mmmm my blackberry had gmail as an option when setting up, so I didn't do anything special. Dunno about iphones

[guartz]

Bulletin.net - FlexTXT.com SMS Text Message from Computer to Mobile Phone

or you can use at&t's native email push software, forget what it's called though.

[Khamsin]

Those seem like roundabout ways to get push functionality (server updated on the fly, e.g. read/unread flag set on the server when you read messages on your phone, mail moved on the server when you move/delete it on your phone, etc).

But if those programs can do it for now, it makes waiting for built-in gmail push easier.

[Exoduso]

'cyber gangs' lol.

[Rokku]

Spam gangs and internet criminal organizations. I loved the wording in this article.