HOMEAmazingly, and unfortunately only temporary, a group of ISP’s effectively killed 2/3 of US email spam yesterday by closing down unscrupulous California hosting provider, McColo. Here’s the original release in CrunchGear.
Apparently a similar phenomenon occurred some weeks ago with the blocking of Intercage, but within about a week, the spammers relocated, largely to McColo, and re-established themselves.
It’s a bit mind-numbing that so much obnoxious SPAM could be concentrated in one hosting solution. The somewhat vigilante solution provided by this group of ISP’s is the only effective anti-SPAM activity, as the courts are bogged down in where SPAM falls in the grand scheme of free speech.
Certainly the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) was a partial solution. However, it only provides that:
- False and misleading header information is banned
- Deceptive subject lines are prohibited
- Opt-out methods must be provided
- Commercial email must be identified as an advertisement and it must include the sender’s valid physical postal address
- Receivers must be warned of sexually explicit material
KidWithMatches is the personal blog of Pete Eberbach, VP Director of Online Marketing & Technology with St. John + Partners.
Tags: can-spam, crunchgear, email registry, intercage, ISP's, McColo, SPAM