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Spam The Almighty Buck The Internet Communications

Spamhaus: MCI Makes $5M A Year In Spam Profits 206

Posted by timothy from the please-stone-the-spam-prophets dept.
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."
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Spamhaus: MCI Makes $5M A Year In Spam Profits More

Spamhaus: MCI Makes $5M A Year In Spam Profits

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  • with a compiny that brig is % million that much? maybe 500 million but only 5?

    • Re:only $5 million (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bird603568 ( 808629 )
      woops i hit post what was meant to been said was: with a company that big what % is 5$ million? It cant be that much. 50$ or 500$ million then would be a big deal.

      • Re:only $5 million (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ssimontis ( 739660 )
        Still, this article shows several things. Lots of people complain that we can't do anything to stop spam without getting several countries to cooperate. While this might be true in the long run, we can still shut down all the spammers in the United States. One of the biggest ways we can stop spam is forcing ISPs to stop supporting it. I am not sure what could be done, but perhaps a large-scale boycott could have an effect?
      • The problem isn't how much they are making or what percentage of their profits is derived from their spam support, it's the fact that MCI is turning a blind eye to activities that are blatantly illegal under the CAN-SPAM act. The excuses they make about not wanting to censor content of their downstream customer ISPs is simply a cop-out to avoid losing this stream of income, regardless of how big or small that income may be. Every other ISP prohibits hosting of spamware sites, why does MCI allow this? Web

    • Re:only $5 million (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:03PM (#11585469)
      Their gain of $5 million is costing companies many times that. That's why it's bad.

    • Re:only $5 million (Score:3, Interesting)

      by thogard ( 43403 )
      If 5 mil is nothing to them, then we need to get them to stop.
      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
      • I wonder if there would be a way to get a large, essential service to effectively blacklist MCI customers. Something like Google. If they stood up and said "We're blocking all MCI traffic until they take action against their spammers", I wonder how long it would take for policy to change.

        I'm not naive enough to think this would ever happen, but we can dream, can't we?

    • So what does Vint [google.com] have to say?

  • illegal spamware? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:00PM (#11585447) Homepage
    and illegal spamware.
    What's illegal about spamware? I thought it was spamming that was illegal, not software that could be used for spamming.

    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)

      by rpozz ( 249652 )
      I assume some spamware uses zombie networks to send spam. Surely that's illegal.

    • Re:illegal spamware? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Secrity ( 742221 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:41PM (#11585703)
      Spamming in the US is not illegal, sending spam illegally is illegal. Selling spamware IS illegal in Virginia and UUNet has a large presence in Virginia.

      The Virginia law says:

      18.2-152.4. Computer trespass; penalty. ... B. It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to sell, give or otherwise distribute or possess with the intent to sell, give or distribute software which (i) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of facilitating or enabling the falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other routing information; (ii) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to facilitate or enable the falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other routing information; or (iii) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in facilitating or enabling the falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other routing information.
      • That's kind of a harsh law, sounds akin to making filesharing software illegal because of the actions of its users.
        • That's kind of a harsh law, sounds akin to making filesharing software illegal because of the actions of its users.

          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
      • Google needs to buy UUNET from MCI before
        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.
    • Did you ever use a dictionary attack when sending out mail to your mailing list ?

  • Now I know why they prohibit port 25 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:03PM (#11585468)
    If you run your own zombie- mailserver, you're competing with them on a lucrative business of theirs.

  • Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gary Destruction ( 683101 ) * on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:04PM (#11585473) Journal
    ISPs should impose an E-embargo against MCI because they support spammers. All mail and traffic from MCI should be blocked until MCI stops helping spammers.

    • Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      MCI == UUNet == huge portion of the backbone. It's impossible, and this is an old old pissing match.

    • Re:Impose an E-embargo against MCI (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pavon ( 30274 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:30PM (#11585647)
      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.

      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.

      • 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?
      • 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.

        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
      • I'd rather lose 1/3 than 3/3. Besides that, Worldcom had to file chapter 11. That doesn't aspire me much confidence.
    • ah. you must run SPEWS.

      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

  • Wierd... (Score:4, Informative)

    by NetNifty ( 796376 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:04PM (#11585479) Homepage
    I'm not defending MCI/UUNET, or even sure if this is the same MCI that this story is about, but an MCI's AUP: [mci.com]

    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)

      by Secrity ( 742221 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:57PM (#11585820)
      The part of the AUP that you are quoting only prohibits the sending of spam. The article is talking about "spam support" which includes other things, such as web site hosting.

      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."
    • Spam-supporters are, in many ways, like spammers. They lie. MCI, when they claim to prohibit spam, is lying.
    • I used to work over in MCI internet provisioning and they seemed like they were pretty serious about turning down lines that were being used for spamming. They even had a team set up to handle spam complaints (To abuse@mci.com if I recall correctly) and they took down several lines while I was there.

      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)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:07PM (#11585493) Journal
    Dear sir,

    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..

  • 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

  • MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:09PM (#11585515) Homepage
    MCI is a $27 billion company. (according to http://global.mci.com/about/investor_relations/fun damentals/).

    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)

      by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:32PM (#11585659) Journal
      Then they should have no quals about cutting off the spammers.

      • Re:MCI Doesn't care about $5M revenue sources (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pyrois ( 856739 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:11PM (#11585907) Homepage
        The point is, they're still making $5M so why bother cutting off the spammers unless it is advantageous for them to do so. I.E. if they make $5M by keeping the spammers, I'm sure they'd drop them if they could make $10M in that action. It's kind of like if you make $80,000/year and every year an extra $5 appears in your account. Even if somebody told you "hey if you stop serving such and such, those $5 will disappear." Why would you bother? In fact, if somebody said "if you stop serving those people, that $5 will turn into $10" you still probably wouldn't care:P In order for MCI to have a legitimate reason to cancel those accounts, they'd have to make hundreds of millions from that decision and/or be in legal trouble. Otherwise, it's a non-issue.
      • Then they should have no quals about cutting off the spammers.

        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
    • You would be surprised about how important $5 million in revenue is to a company like MCI. Weren't they just in bancruptcy?

    • Spamming is now illegal in the U.S. and they are a company that just got into major accounting trouble when they were WorldCom. The last thing that MCI needs is to have more clients abandon them and more government scrutiny because they support spammers.
      • No spamming is now specifically LEGAL in the United States thanks to the CAN SPAM bill. You just can't do things like fake reply-to lines and you have to give an opt-out method; there are a few other regulations too that don't come to mind.

        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.
    • Actually in the corporate world you will find that companies don't want to loose $5 mill in revenue. The department and the managers that that money is credited to will fight tooth and nail to prevent loosing that kind of revenue. You can bet some salesman is getting a nice commision on that sale.

      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
    • 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 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
    • At the board level, you're probably right. But somewhere within MCI there are individuals that are using spammers to meet their sales targets. They're not about to drop it without pressure from above.
    • Apparently, from what I've gathered from laid-off MCI/Worldcom employees, this may be the work of a lone mid-level manager try to boost his bottom line and impress his local vice president.

      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!"
    • I'm actually surprised that all they're making from spammers is $5M, but if the direct amounts are that small, great. But how much does that spam itself cost them? It increases the load on their mail servers, an costs a lot of money in the spam filtering they need to do for their customers and for their company's internal email systems, sysadmin time, and lawyer time. While spam is a huge fraction of email traffic, it's not a huge fraction of total bits transmitted on a typical big ISP's network, becaus

  • Making Money (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bonhamme Richard ( 856034 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:22PM (#11585592)
    Note: I'm stealing this for Richard Marcinko's Rogue Warrior's Strategy for Success. Don't sue me Dickie, I gave you credit.

    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)

      by slashname3 ( 739398 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:38PM (#11586073)
      The credo list you have (1. to the customer 2. to the employees 3. to the community 4. to the shareholders) was a short term abberation that virtually no company in the world today would agree with.

      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. :) It has been long known that many companies calculate just how bad they can perform customer service without running off most of the thier customers. Why do you think companies want you to input your account numbers when you call customer service? So they can identify really good customers from the rest of and drop you into a long wait queue in India. Really good customers (read high dollar value customers) get put at the head of the line and get routed to customer service centers here in the US.

      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.
    • The spammers MCI hosts don't preferentially hurt MCI customers. They hurt everyone. So the J&J analogy isn't quite on the spot. If anything, this one's a community issue, definitely not a customer issue.

      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.

    • While this is interesting, it's wholly irrelevant. The tampering was huge news, could be fatal to consumers, and ultimately could have destroyed J&J's business if they didn't restore public confidence in their product line.

      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
    • The company I work for put out a 1.2 M USD bid for telecom service. MCI and SAVVIS both bid.

      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.

  • Not surprising. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jwcorder ( 776512 )
    Aren't we talking about the same MCI/Worldcomm that cooked their books 2 years ago? So bad accounting practices don't seem to be the only questionable business in which they participate.

  • Non Unique (Score:2, Interesting)

    by discordja ( 612393 )
    Why is this news? Almost every bandwidth provider in the country will house spammers so long as they aren't breaking any laws. Internap, the largest bandwidth provider in the states, houses a good number of spammers even tho it's "against policy" to send unsolicited email. If the almighty dollar is involved don't expect companies to be "moral."
    • Thats an lousy argument. Just because everone else is doing $badthing, doesn't make it right. The MCI thinking goes "they don't send spam from OUR network, they relay via troijaned machines in random dsl networks to hide the origin of the spam, so they aren't breaking our AUP."

      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)

    by MorboNixon ( 130386 ) * on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:28PM (#11585635)
    As a former employee of UUNet, whom, in turn, got bought out by Worldcom, which was once and now is again called MCI...*breath*...I can say that my pop.net POP3 account I had when I employee there remained active for at least 4 years after I left in 2000. It only got deleted after I stopped checking it for over a month.

    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.
    • They're not the only ISP that doesn't pay attention to accounts. A friend with a dial-up account back in the mid nineties closed her account when she moved. She discovered that she still had email access to it, and even dial-up was still available. Her boyfriend shared the dial-up info with a bunch of their friends and they all had free net access for several years. Last I checked it was still active.

  • I bet it costs MCI more than $5M (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sbaker ( 47485 ) * on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:38PM (#11585686) Homepage
    Yeah - they may inadvertently make $5M from spammers - but I bet the cost of spam to them is a LOT more than that. It follows that this is not an intentional part of their business model - but merely the residue of spammers that they've been unable to eliminate.

  • Of course. They're criminals (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:46PM (#11585732) Homepage
    What do you expect? Worldcom/MCI was run by criminals. Their former CEO, Bernie Ebbers, is on trial right now in New York for fraud and conspiracy.

  • AS number (Score:2, Insightful)

    by IAR80 ( 598046 )
    Does anyone know MCI's AS number? Because I am going to take it out of my BGP.
    • If you had clue enough to deserve access to a BGP-equipped router (I doubt that you do) you would know that MCI is the world's largest provider of internet services, and that to take them out of your BGP would only hurt you as half the internet (it might be less now, but it used to be half) couldn't reach you.
      • Well if you have clue enogh to know how to conigure BGP you are well aware that you can filter the routing using regexp against the AS path, therefore you can block just their adress space and let their AS owning customers through. I bet that the hosting service has adresses who are part of their AS. :D
  • Is this over the quintillion dollars lost on the 200 million billion man hours that their employees waste deleting the stuff every morning?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:32PM (#11586043)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Explain to me (Score:3, Interesting)

      by timmyf2371 ( 586051 )
      It's rather simple - filesharing gives people something for nothing whereas spam annoys people and wastes their time.

      Not saying I agree with this "philosophy" by any means though.

    • Re:Explain to me (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DreamerFi ( 78710 )
      I'm sorry, I'm not aware of any legit uses of software that sends bulk mail via virus-infected computers owned by others. Please enlighten us.

  • 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.)

    • 90% of mail to my server is spam now. 95% by 2006 doesn't seem too much of a stretch.

    • 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.
      • Um, I said I -don't- run an ISP-side filter. My ISP does make it available, but unfortunately they drop all incoming mail from .ru domain (Russia), and I actually have a need to receive those.

        I do run some simple automated rules on my inbox, but on average less than five emails a week go into my 'Junk' folder.
    • Does anyone on /. actually receive as much spam as Spamhaus reports?

      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)

    by PocketPick ( 798123 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @08:04PM (#11586227)
    They've also had some of the highest fines when it comes to violating the do-not-call list.

    Example [wokr13.tv]

  • MCI's spam policy hurts clients (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John3 ( 85454 ) <john3@@@cornells...com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @08:20PM (#11586342) Homepage Journal
    I've found our mail server blocked by several smaller RBL's merely because our Class C is part of MCI's pool. Granted that most ISP's don't use these small personal RBL's, but it isn't a good sign when someone will block MCI's entire IP block because of the amount of spam originating within their network.

    I wish they were still just uuNet. :-(
    • this is the while point.

      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

  • They make far more than $5M from spam (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @08:50PM (#11586487) Journal
    Those sleazebags make far more than a mere $5 million from spammers. Whenever each of their customers are getting spammed, they're only too happy to send them the bill for extra-bandwidth consumed (plenty of people have T-1 or above high-speed connections that are rated by used bandwidth).

  • Hosting spam costs more than is brings in. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've worked for a major hosting provider, and I can
    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
  • According to TFA [spamhaus.org]:

    Over

    70% of current spam comes from proxies (PCs infected with viruses/trojans). Since the release of Sobig, the first commercial spam virus designed by spammers to infect PCs turning them into networks of proxies through which spammers then send millions of spams anonymously, spammers have released countless virus variants, mostly variations of the original Sobig code, and have been infecting an estimated 80,000-100,000 new PCs every week.

    So what I want to know is when is MS going to

  • Let them know it's pretty lame to be making money on spammers when spammers are costing other companies billions.

    hostmaster@mci.com

    1-800-465-7187

    1-800-264-1000

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