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SpamCop To Be Sold To IronPort?

Posted by simoniker on from the TwoWord-ComPanies dept.

Iphtashu Fitz writes "InfoWorld is reporting that SpamCop is about to be sold to IronPort Systems for an undisclosed amount of money. According to the InfoWorld article, the announcement will be made on Nov. 25, and will include IronPort investing $1 million in SpamCop to keep the service up and running. IronPort apparently makes use of the SpamCop DNS blocklist in their spam filtering products and this move is seen as a way to help support SpamCop and formalize their relationship. IronPort is reported as stating that the SpamCop blocklist data will remain freely available to the public."

11 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. webmail.spamcop.net ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What about spamcop's mail service? What will happen to people who pay ~$30/year for zero, and yeah, I mean zero, spam? Accounts sold?

  2. IronPort's Reputation? by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I currently have a SpamCop account, it's my primary address (though I also use Spam Gourmet's aliasing service). Does anyone know if I should start looking for a new email address?

    1. Re:IronPort's Reputation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Let me get this straight...these are the same great guys that produce the IP-shifting, filter-thwarting, 1-million-messages-per-hour email delivery appliance? Sounds like they provide tools to spammers, then clean up on the other end with filtering tools and services. But I could be wrong.

    2. Re:IronPort's Reputation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yes, they do understand the spam problem quite well, but even Ironport employees call their flagship mail delivery box the 'Spaminator 3000' when they think no one is listening.

  3. I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferent.. by numbski · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's the deal.

    SpamCop works on fighting spam. They get an investor.

    Happy day!

    Um...I've read several posts that say IronPorts is a good company, so no worries about current customers being abused - good, so my internal gut feelings about privacy issues are abated.

    I haven't used SpamCop personally, so this is only an impression, however I'm a strict hater of blacklists (blocklists?), and that's how SpamCop is being described.

    I personally opt for SpamAssassin Milter, although any method of plugging into SA would suit me, simply because it's so highly customizable, open source, and I don't have to worry about a list going down or suddenly blocking everyone, which has NEVER happened recently (would have linked to the appropriate /. article, but I'm feeling lazy right now).

    Now am I that far off? Are there redeeming qualities about SpamCop that I'm overlooking that make this blocklist a good thing? Who controls who's blocked? Is it fair? Is there a human contact when things go awry?

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

  4. Ironport? by jfroot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From Ironport's Webpage:

    IronPort's Virtual Gateway technology allows a single IronPort to deliver separate campaigns on unique IP addresses. This technology ensures that if one campaign has a problem with less than perfect spam filters at receiving ISPs, it won't impact other campaigns on separate Virtual Gateways. Each IronPort A60 supports up to 256 unique outbound IP addresses.
    Doesn't this sound a but like a spamming appliance? Basically it's saying that if one of your IPs gets blacklisted for spamming, that's ok because it will use a different one automatically.

  5. Iorn Port is also OSS friendly. by ClarkEvans · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They have funded the continued development of Python with continuations, called Stackless, by hiring the original author part-time.

    1. Re:Iorn Port is also OSS friendly. by scrytch · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wasn't able to completely figure out what the Stackless project is trying to achieve. Prolly since I'm not really a programmer. Can someone shed some light on this?

      Stackless, which incidentally isn't the best name for it (it's based on an architecture that is best described now as "many stacks", not stackless), is a patch to Python that started off as offering first-class continuations (a continuation can be described as taking a snapshot of the run state and providing a sort of "goto" to get back to that snapshot), but it quickly moved away from that into a concurrency model called microthreads. Microthreads in a nutshell are a way of structuring programs as if they were multithreaded, but unlike "real" threads, only one thread ever runs at once, so either a truly concurrent scheduler must pre-empt them, or a microthread must yield to allow another to run.

      The advantage to microthreads is mostly about syntax -- you can write programs as if they were multithreaded, but without having to lock anything, or use awkward bottleneck constructs like thread pools. With added features like channels (a pipe between microthreads), the fact that switching between microthreads is faster than calling a function, and the upcoming feature of 3.0 that lets you pickle microthreads, Stackless really should deserve a spot in Python core (it even dropped continuations, which was Guido's main objection).

      Back to the topic: Ironport appliances run on Stackless Python, using many thousands of microthreads (presumably one for every mail that comes in). Another production use of Stackless is the EVE Online MMORPG. Ironport must keep Tismer busy on other things tho -- Stackless hasn't seen a public update in many months...

      --
      I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
  6. Re:I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferen by Kris_J · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Spamcop is a colaberative blacklist. If a Spamcop user (possibly several for checking) reports an email as spam, any further messages that appear to be from the same source get dumped in the "probably spam" pile for a while. To get off the Spamcop blacklist you simply have to not send spam for a short period (I forget how long). Yes, this means if *no one* reports Spam via Spamcop, it soon becomes an empty blacklist or if heaps of people report legitimate mail it gets trapped as spam. Such is life.

    The email service itself lets you decide which techniques and/or lists you wish to use to filter your mail: Spam Assassin scores, Blacklists (you can even use Spamcop's email service but not their own blacklist), or simply by country.

  7. Hrm... Sounds Fishy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok... So Ironport has 2 main product lines. One for accepting inbound email for multi-site redundant messaging infrastuctures, the other for blasting out huge volumes of mail for marketing campaigns (ahem, SPAM).

    I did some research on these guys awhile back mainly for their inbound smtp gateway stuff, for a multi-site forwarding mess I'm currently trying to straighten out.

    Now about 3 months ago they announced that they were going to do a deal with brightmail for spam filtering on their inbound mail gateway line (and so did symantec for their mail filtering/av/anti-spam/app firewall appliance) and now they're investing/buying spamcop.

    Am I the only one seeing these guys play both sides of the fence? I mean, they've got one division dedicated to optimizing the throughput of their hardware to deliver the maximum spam/sec, while the other group is activly working away setting up spam filtering and blacklisting mail (which quite a bit of probably originated from hardware they made!).

    Is it just me or is this kind of odd?

  8. What about Cyveillance? by ccwaterz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I stopped using Spamcop when they struck a deal to send data to Cyveillance. Is that going to end?