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Put that champagne away - the “Death of Spam” has been greatly exaggerated

November 13, 2008 1:06am
by Richard Waters

For a brief moment this week, it looked like spam had been vanquished.

No kidding. The Washington Post claimed to have slain the beast. Late on Tuesday afternoon, after an investigation by the newspaper, a hosting centre called McColo Corp, which had acted as something of a spam hub, was shut down.

IronPort, an internet security firm, said it saw global spam volumes immediately plummet by two-thirds as a result. Based on the typical amount of spam sloshing around the internet, that suggests that McColo alone was responsible for pumping out around 100bn messages daily.

This victory has been short-lived. Figures from the same security firm show that as of late Wednesday, spam was already bouncing back. Volumes today have been down only 27 per cent - something of a success, but certainly nothing like the immediate drop when McColo closed.

The same thing happened when another Californian hosting centre, called Intercage, was shut down in September, a spokesperson for Ironport says. It doesn’t take long for the spammers to find another conduit for their messages.

Of the latest setback for the spammers, the spokesperson says: “We fully expect they will find another hosting service to use.”

November 13, 2008 1:06am in Internet | Comment

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