A group of Internet providers have essentially shut down California hosting service, McColo, yesterday and total spam production dropped considerably. The provider, notorious for their low-down ways, was producing 2/3 of the spam in the U.S. Other providers saw a drop from about 40 spam messages per second to 10 per second – a major victory for those whose m3mb3rz are already rock solid.
Another drop happened in September with the demise of Intercage but levels rose again as the spammers headed to McColo. It’s obvious that this minor shut-down won’t effect us all in the long term, but feel free to thank the Internet gods for allowing you at least a brief respite from this horrible scourge. Anti-spam service provider IronPort says
Bhandari said he expects the spam volume to recover to normal levels in about a week, as the spam operations that were previously hosted at McColo move to a new home.
“We’re seeing a slow recovery,” Bhandari. “We fully expect this to recover completely, and to go into the highest ever spam period during the upcoming holiday season.”