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IPS busted, spam drops
By David Liu Ph.D.
Nov 16, 2008 - 4:48:29 PM

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 Some readers may have noticed that in last few days fewer spam mails or junk mails went through their mailbox. That is because the Internet Service provider ISP called McColo was shut down Tuesday by upstream provider Hurricane Electric. An ISP is a web company that provides web hosting service to businesses and individuals.

McColo was reportedly responsible for 35 to 70 percent of the world's total spam. The ISP was not necessarily directly involved in sending any spam, but it hosted websites that were run by spammers who sent spam mails. Sending spam can be a highly profitable business. Some spammers earn millions of dollars a year unless they get caught.

Spamming is a huge problem for the Internet.   It causes huge loss of productivity.   The time and effort lost by many businesses and individuals could be in a matter of billions of U.S. dollars.   But no internet giant ever thinks seriously to make an email server to prevent spamming.

Google webmail has filters which more often than not filter out legitimate emails to junk mailbox while occasionally allowing spam mails to get into the inbox.   The same thing happens to other major web mail services like hotmail.com and yahoo.com.

Bill Gates had reportedly vowed early probably in 2006 to make an electronic messaging system to block all types of junk emails or spam mails once forever. But there has been no reporting that he had done anything about it and now he has officially retired.

Experts said the spam reduction that occurred last week may be short-lived. Spammers will find new web hosts to do their mass mailing again soon from somewhere.   After all, many web hosting companies need income in the poor economy.

Those who want to completely block spam may use some email services that require confirmation. That is, after a sender sends an email to the recipient, the system will send a notice to the sender asking him to manually confirm that he has indeed sent the email. Such service providers include spamarrest.com.   But it comes with an annual fee.