Spamhaus: MCI Makes $5M A Year In Spam Profits 206
An anonymous reader submits "According to a new Spamhaus report, MCI makes $5 million a year hosting spammers and illegal spamware. MCI/UUNET has long topped the Spamhaus spam supporting ISPs list, with nearly 200 active SBL entries. MCI even took on spammers such as iMedia, when they were terminated by Savvis in their half-hearted response to leaked pro-spam memos."
only $5 million (Score:2)
Re:only $5 million (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:only $5 million (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:only $5 million (Score:2)
Re:only $5 million (Score:2)
Yes, they should be censored. Seems to be along the same line as banning assault weapons in my own personal viewpoint.
Re:only $5 million (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:only $5 million (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way to do that is nail them where it hurts most, their stock price. The only way to do that is blacklist them and let wall street know its going to happen and make sure that it does happen.
What needs to happen is that on Apr 1, we make fools of them by taking down their entire network. This is going to take massive planning because they run such a major part of it. The real problem is most name servers are still on it as well as man
Re:only $5 million (Score:2)
I'm not naive enough to think this would ever happen, but we can dream, can't we?
Re:only $5 million (Score:2)
illegal spamware? (Score:4, Interesting)
And in any event, one person's `spamware' may very well be another person's tool of choice for sending out mail to a large (and yet legitimate) mailing list.
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Virginia law says:
18.2-152.4. Computer trespass; penalty.
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:2)
Not really. If you look at the law, it specifically refers to software that's intended specifically to conduct your mailings in a fraudulant way (spoofing, hiding server addresses, etc.). File "sharing" (the act, if not necessarily all of the tools that are used in that way) may indeed be used almost entirely to do illegal things, but that's a different situation than the selling of tools th
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:2)
MCI gets gobbled up. I think Google could
could put UUNET on the "straight and narrow".
Those companies that employ spammers to get
"their message out" might be forced to use
Google's advertising strategy instead.
I, for one, would consider that a welcome
change for the better.
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:2)
Re:illegal spamware? (Score:2)
Now I know why they prohibit port 25 (Score:3, Funny)
Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, I don't want to make ISP's responsible for the content that they are hosting. I think that would set very bad precedent, and the internet as a whole will be much better off if if ISPs are legal regarded as common carriers.
Fight the spammers not the postal service.
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:2)
You do realize that UUNET(/MCI/WorldCom) supports roughly one third of all the traffic on the internet, don't you. You can't simply block one third of all your legitimate incoming mail.
I personally would find it infuriating as all hell, as would most users of the 'net. Within one day of such an obstruction, I bet MCI would respond decisively. Perhaps the most damaging response would also be the most successful?
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't about content; it's about behavior. If I rant with a bullhorn at 4 am on your street, the cops will happily haul me off for disturbing the peace, even if I'm reading the Bill of Rights.
Sending spam is in the same category as running DDOS attacks, spreading viruse
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:2)
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:2)
honestly, SPEWS is one of the most irresponsible blacklists in the world, and yet many ISPs still rely upon it.
my server was once blacklisted because it was hosted by a company which had once used a colocation facility which had once hosted a spammer. a nice string of coincidences, huh? and the cool part is that there's really no way to get off the list once you're on.
they frequently block entire ranges of IPs, and I wouldn't be surprised if they blocked MCI or some other humung
Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:2)
Wierd... (Score:4, Informative)
Email Sending unsolicited mail messages, including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements, is explicitly prohibited. A user shall not use another site's mail server to relay mail without the express permission of the site.
Which is strange because in the article it mentions "MCI is the only American, and indeed only Western network, where this spam support activity is 'not against our policy,'".
Or does MCI just post that as it's AUP on it's site to cover it's back if it wants to close an account for spamming in the future, or to comply with possible regulations etc?
Re:Wierd...Two different things (Score:4, Informative)
From the article:
"MCI Worldcom's official position on the issue is that MCI can't stop their spam gangs selling proxy hijacking spamware from MCI's network as that would be 'censoring' the distribution and sale of illegal proxy hijacking software.
MCI is the only American, and indeed only Western network, where this spam support activity is "not against our policy". Spamhaus maintains that MCI's 'protected speech' excuses for servicing known spam gangs and proxy spamware distribution sites are dishonest and non-sensical in the face of the Internet's spam epidemic."
Re:Wierd...Two different things (Score:2)
Re:Wierd... (Score:2)
Re:Wierd... (Score:2)
Of course that was over half a decade ago now, so I don't know if their internal policies have changed since then or not.
Urgent request.. (Score:5, Funny)
I am a former member of the MCI ISP, here in my home country on Nigeria. Recently we have aquired the rights to $5 million ($5,000,000) US, which is ours to dispose of by rights, but we urgently need a business partner in Europe to help realise this sum. For use of your services we are prepared to offer you %20 of net proceeds. Please do not discuss this with anyone, since confidentiallity is paramount...
Please reply with your name, contact address & phone number & bank details for further discussions..
Yours
AA Albalone..
One simple suggestion (Score:2, Interesting)
If as TFA reads "MCI is the only American, and indeed only Western network, where this spam support activity is 'not against our policy'," then Congress should rule their (in)activity explicitly against the law. Most ISPs already agree as a matter of their own policy. Yes, the spammers will go elsewhere, but the U.S. should first clean our own house. Writing this law (or lines in a law) seems like a no-brainer.
BG
Re:One simple suggestion (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:One simple suggestion (Score:2, Informative)
I work for a large ISP / Hosting company and I have seen on more than 1 occasion where 1 site has had spam complaints from a competitor where the sole intent was to get rid of others selling similar products / services.
Yes most spam is an open & shut case and we'll pull any & everything relating to the spam (including occasions where the only connections was a colo hosting the DNS).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporately, they don't care about $5M revenue streams. If it's not a homerun, billion dollar profit potential, it's not going to be developed.
I doubt MCI is actively pursuing SPAM as a business venture. Not unless they believe it's going to generate billions in the next five years. Otherwise, this is a non-story, about MCI making a few pennies because they aren't 100% vigilant.
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:2)
I'd wager that the administrative costs (legal, accounting, sales, NOC activities, phone calls) of validating that a spam complaint is legit, and their customer is aware of, and not doing anything to prevent the spam, and on and on, would dwarf the loss of the revenue. In other words, it would probably cost the more than $5M to go to the trouble. Now, if the get sufficiently bad PR, and that impacts their sales efforts, and they lose even one
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:2)
MCI has an even better reason to stop this (Score:2)
Re:MCI has an even better reason to stop this (Score:2, Informative)
The Nigerian thing and viral spam has always been illegal as they constitute fraud and vandalism (repectively). But they aren't usually described as spam and won't ever be effected by legislation or probably anything else other than email filters.
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:2)
I suspect MCI makes more money that that anyway. Remember that is just money from the spammers. They also get money from all their other customers which have to have bandwidth to handle the spam. So the real
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe you are correct in that the board of directors for MCI, in the course of business, would not be overly concerned about losing $5 million a year in business, or even $5 million a month in business. On the other hand, one of the many VPs at MCI in charge of the smaller regional sales units would probably view the loss of $5 million in revenue as possibly th
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:2)
The work of one lone gun man inside MCI maze (Score:2)
MCI CEO and board members... Try moving your lip and ennunicating your voice clearly by following the Donald Trump and "The Apprentice"...
"You're fired!"
How much do those spammers COST them? (Score:2)
Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:2)
Crazy or not, it's real. I've been working for a comparatively small $6B dollar company for a few years now, and that's how it is. And that's what I've been told by people who've spent over a decade in the company.
The business is not grown by millions at a time. Corporate does not want to pursue 200 separate $5M revenue sources. They target a few hundred-million or bil
Making Money (Score:4, Interesting)
To paraphrase an anecdote used as an example in Dickie's book :
Johnson and Johnson's Corporate credo lists J&J's responsibilities in this order 1) to the consumer 2) to the employees 3) to the community 4) to the shareholders (meaning to making money.)
When Tylenol (a J&J product) was tampered with in Chicago, resulting in the deaths of several people, the local police advised J&J that it was an isolated incident, and that a recall was not necessary.
J&J recalled anyway (a $350 million process) and consumers flocked back to Tylenol when it was reintroduced to the market with new tamper proof packaging. Since consumers had proof that J&J cared about them, J&J ended up making money.
The moral of the story is that caring about your consumers may be less profitable in the short run but that in the long run companies that put the consumer first do better. It's obvious to me that MCI does not put the consumer first. Point 4 on the J&J credo is point 1 in MCI's strategy. MCI just lost one customer.
Re:Making Money (Score:5, Insightful)
All companies today use the following order 1. shareholders 2. shareholders 3. shareholders 4. company executives.
Companies today have a vision that is about 3 months out to the next quarterly report. The reason is that shareholders will trash a companies stock if they don't exceed all expectation each quarter. And companies have no loyalty or responsibility toward employees. Employees are the first ones cast adrift so a company can show a short term improvement on their bottom line. As to customers, I have to think that most companies feel their customers are morons and idiots. Just look at the commercials they run.
J&J was in a shear panic over that incident. And they did what they did because they felt the company was dead if they did not. Bottom line. Nothing more nothing less.
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
[snip]
There's not a lot of governance going on in corporate boardrooms. And the first thing that's not going on is that boards are not establishing the purpose of the corporation. Board members believe their only choice is to follow the prime directive, which is to maximize returns to shareholders.
The genesis of this directive is worth exploring a bit. It may have a feeling to it of long-settled and inviolable la
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
Who would have known... Thank a lot!
This isn't a customer issue (Score:2)
That said, as mentioned, this is likely due to the fact that they are enormous and don't have the time to eradicate $5M worth of spam business.
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
In contrast, MCI making a few bucks from spammers isn't in the news, not really newsworthy, won't kill anyone, and doesn't threaten MCI's entire business.
There's little benefit to MCI in addressing this particular issue. MCI could aggressively attack this revenue source, but no one
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
I printed a list of the spammers on both, set them in front of my boss along with the RBL entries for them, and told him I couldn't work for a company that would support these people with contracts, that I would have to leave if either bid was accepted. And I ment it. And he could tell.
End result: Both were disqualified from the bidding process.
MCI & SAVVIS: Get rid of your spammers. All of them.
Re:Making Money (Score:2)
Not surprising. (Score:2, Interesting)
Non Unique (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Non Unique (Score:2)
And it is NEWS - because the bad publicity is the only weapon against immoral behavior of companies.
God doesn't care if you don't say "bless you!" (Score:5, Interesting)
What does this mean? Well, speaking from experience, they don't have nearly as many people monitoring this stuff as they should. So, my guess is that this SPAM abuse is the result of neglect. However, as with most any telecom/IT company, Marketing and Sales drives the business, the techies are beholden to the machinations of the Marketroids and Salesbots. This could be their bright idea.
Re:God doesn't care if you don't say "bless you!" (Score:2, Interesting)
I bet it costs MCI more than $5M (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course. They're criminals (Score:3, Informative)
AS number (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:AS number (Score:2)
Re:AS number (Score:2)
Re:AS number (Score:2)
Re:AS number (Score:2)
Would it not be more intelligent to find their ipblock and filter on that.
I think IHBT.
Re:AS number (Score:2)
Re:AS number (Score:2)
What about this loss (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Explain to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Not saying I agree with this "philosophy" by any means though.
Re:Explain to me (Score:3, Insightful)
a question... (Score:2)
Does anyone on /. actually receive as much spam as Spamhaus reports? According to TFA, they're estimating that as much as 95% of all email will be spam by 2006; I don't know about you, but I don't run an ISP-side spam filter, and I average maybe 2 or 3 a week, out of several hundred emails per week (I belong to several email lists, so my average is fairly high.)
Re:a question... (Score:2)
Re:a question... (Score:2)
And what happens when you take away the filter? You see lots of spam right? The emails you don't see are still taking up bandwidth on the internet cause they still need to be transfered.
Re:a question... (Score:2)
I do run some simple automated rules on my inbox, but on average less than five emails a week go into my 'Junk' folder.
Re:a question... (Score:2)
I run Popfile [sourceforge.net] on my main PC. For someone who gets more than a handful of spams a day it's simply invaluable. Let me prove it to you. Here are some stats I've just copied and pasted from its web interface:
Since Thu Nov 20 16:14:56 2003
Bucket Classification Count
inbox-----------1,505-------1.04%
invoices--------196---------0.13%
newsletters-----2,076-------1.44%
spam------------139,989-----97.29%
unclassified----114---------0.07%
Me
No suprising considering MCI's past. (Score:3, Interesting)
Example [wokr13.tv]
MCI's spam policy hurts clients (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish they were still just uuNet.
Re:MCI's spam policy hurts clients (Score:3, Informative)
if MCI won't listen to complaints from non-customers who are victimized by them, the pressure to change needs to come directly from MCI customers.
IOW, RBLs _make_ spam MCI's problem. the more MCI ignores their abusive customers, the more MCI will be blocked, and the more MCI customers will complain to them.
the idea is that either:
1) mci will come to their senses and nuke their spammers, or
2) go out of business after all their customers leave in disgust.
it looks like they're hellb
Re:MCI's spam policy hurts clients (Score:2, Insightful)
I would not call getting your email to work 100% again to be "suffering". You'll suffer more staying with MCI. Of course, if MCI was not blacklisted and blocked, you wouldn't have this incentive to leave MCI. No battle is needed. You simply hunt for a new ISP that has no history of supporting spam (suggestion: avoid telephone companies and cable companies), and sign up. Have your company lawyer write a notification to MCI that you are cancelling your contract due to their documented failure to provide
They make far more than $5M from spam (Score:5, Informative)
Hosting spam costs more than is brings in. (Score:2, Informative)
tell you, hosting spammers is a money-loosing proposition. Our company used to host some spammers, of the "following the letter (but not spirit) of the law", "We're not spammers! <wink-wink nudge-nudge>"
variety. Some of them were huge accounts, including our biggest customer.
None of them were worth it. The spammers themselves were a huge drain on our support dept, and many of our other customers were constantly complaining because of our IP blocks be
So where is it all coming from? (Score:2)
So what I want to know is when is MS going to
Let's make it more expensive. (Score:2)
hostmaster@mci.com
1-800-465-7187
1-800-264-1000
Re:It's nothing personal.... (Score:2)
Re:New mail protocol (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:New mail protocol (Score:2)
And that is our problem with the Internet today. 20 years ago you could schedule a time to switch over to a new protocol and that would be that. Sorry, we didn't get your mail because we don't use that protocol anymore. Didn't you get the memo?
Re:New mail protocol (Score:2)
C = complex - and anti-spammable!
Re:New mail protocol (Score:2)
E-mail - for that matter, even the telephone system - is a random, anonymous contact system. What I mean by that is that you don't know where, when or whom is going to contact you via e-mail, and it's supposed to function that way. You can't secure your system against anonymous contacts or one of the design intents of the system fails.
IOW, SMTP, though it could be much better, isn't
Re:New mail protocol (Score:4, Interesting)
X.400 fixed all the problems. You can buy a pateneted solution today that fixes all your email problem but it costs several tens of thousands of dollars per year in license fees alone to run an x.400 system.