Savvis Grudgingly Get Savvy About Spam

ElvenMonkey writes "The BBC is reporting that Savvis has finally promised to ditch those accounts that are using its network to send spam, in an effort to reduce the damage already done against its reputation; the CEO promises that all such accounts will be closed within 10 days (working days?) Amongst these accounts are believed to be the majority of the top 150 worst spammers worldwide."

Comments

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they still have any link to the network? Other ISPs should cut them off if they refuse to cut off spammers.

Re:Question

[ackthpt]

Why do they still have any link to the network? Other ISPs should cut them off if they refuse to cut off spammers.

Their major pipe provider could probably care less what they do, same as Savvis did, as long as customers paid their bills. The only people bright enough to figure out who they are are geeks who use traceroute.

Re:Question

[robslimo]

Ask the North American Operator's Group They are just starting to comment on this item but, other than participating in blacklists like SPEWS, they don't seem to have as much clout as one would expect (or at least hope). Hmmm, maybe is story is evidence that it may be changing?

Interesting, looks like maybe Paul Vixie reads slashdot too (or maybe he surfs the BBC all day?).

If it makes money...

[ElForesto]

... the spam will keep flowing. I guess the spammers themselves aren't the only ones raking in the green. I would imagine that the prospect of losing so much face to their largest clients is probably the only thing that got them to consider fixing the problem. If I happened to operate a large company, I wouldn't want to be associated with a company that's a spam factory.

Why 10 days?

[garcia]

They obviously know who the 148 people are so why will it take them 10 days to remove their accounts?

Are they going to send them a greeting card or something that says, "oh, even though you are great customers we are being told we can no longer host your illegal activities so you have 10 days to vacate?"

Re:Why 10 days?

[mageos]

10 days gives them time to switch to a new network, with no downtime.

Re:Why 10 days?

[gclef]

Obviously, this will be conjecture, but my guess would be that 10 days is "reasonable", by their definition in the contract. The idea is if they get sued by any of the kicked spammers, they can point to the termination clause that includes "reasonable notification" and claim that 10 days is "reasonable", so they were within the terms of the contract.

Re:Why 10 days?

[SkjeggApe]

Because that's how long it would take savvis to set up savvis2.net, or spamfriendlyisp.net, or something similar, move some servers around, send a "Don't use savvis.net/login anymore, use savvis2.net/login" email to all their "premium" customers, and LOUDLY proclaim that savvis.net has taken extreme measures in the battle against spam, and is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Dropped for now

[sbackholm]

Savvis may be finally ready to drop these spammers, but how long before another ISP is willing to pick-up the $2 million dollar cash flow?

Re:Dropped for now

[Mateito]

$2 million dollar cash flow

Immoral, illegal, whatever. If they are really pulling in that amount of money, I'd consider doing it.

However, I have grave doubts that believing that the money is that good. You can buy a good wad of "regulators" with that cash.

Re:Dropped for now

[gcaseye6677]

The objective should be to force spammers to migrate to smaller and smaller ISPs, that way the small ISPs which host spammers and few other clients can be completely firewalled with minimal collateral damage. As the ISPs lose customers, which are sick of being blocked, they will be left with only spammers and eventually they'll die out completely. Only then will spamming become too difficult to be profitable.

Re:Right after they were threatened with a netbloc

[Theatetus]

There are ISPs in the world that haven't already blocked all of Savvis at the router level?

Well, given that Savvis's customers (both their own and the ones they got from c&w) include people like Lycos and a few Federal agencies, that might not be such a good idea.

Re:Right after they were threatened with a netbloc

[beavis88]

If 99.99% of their business comes from other sources (as TFA says), then giving up that piddly amount of revenue in order not to be associated with 148 of the most worthless humans on earth should be a slam dunk. Well, at least if they're looking past their next quarter's projections, which admittedly may be a stretch.

If they were serious.

[www.sorehands.com]

If they were serious about spam (not just because it is starting to cost them), they could do more.

When they cancel a spammer, make the information on the spammer public so that the spammer can be tracked and sued.

I thought all Spam was from evil non-Americans?

[mark2003]

Every time a story gets raised on Slashdot about spam, hundreds of Slashdot posters blame it on those commies in China, Korea, Russia etc and then call for blocks of all emails from these countries...

Now we have some proof that 148 of the world's worst spammers are hosted by a US company will these same people call for a complete block on US emails or is that now a crazy approach?

Re:Truth about Savvis

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not a whole flipping lot of "truth" there, except claims that this company 1) overworks its employees, and 2) is nepotistic.

Even if true, that's about my baseline expectation these days. Although it amused me greatly to see (yet again) an emotional outburst webpage with "facts coming soon!" claims.

Spammers will go elsewhere

[Random BedHead Ed]

Until there is a universal anti-spam framework in place across the internet, this move won't help anyone. It will help Savvis's reputation (at least, it will help them eventually; people will still block them for a while). But it won't help spam recipients, because the spammers will simply go elsewhere. Spammers, being the leeches that they are, adapt pretty damn fast.

From TFA...

[jcr]

As rumours about Savvis and the spammers grew on the internet, executives discussed different ways of keeping the customers and whether they could hide them by changing their names or their computer IP addresses.

One memo, from a senior Savvis executive in charge of Information Security, warned fellow management that the company was in danger of losing its good reputation and a secure and honourable provider.

He warned that they could lose their ability to sell to upstanding customers.

Too late. The fact that the PHBs at Savvis actually considered keeping the scumbags as customers takes them off my acceptable vendors list.

May they burn in hell.

-jcr

Users' worm-infected boxes?

[necro2607]

I wonder if it's occured to anyone that a decent percentage of those "spammers"' machines are actually those of unaware home users with worms or back-door type software installed on them...

No...No...No...

[www.sorehands.com]

There will be hosts in Russia, China, Korea, and Brazil.

We need to track down the spammers, take them to court, and take away some of there money.

One lawsuit is not going to put a dent in their business, but when they have to defend 50 lawsuits and pay $10,000 in attorney fees to defend each one and then pay a $5,000 judgment, then it will hurt them.

Re:AUPs mean nothing at all

[Skapare]

With respect, I would strongly suggest that AUPs are very meaningful in the sense that they constitute a contract that may be enforced in a court of law.

The point is, as you say, that they may be enforced. But that does not mean that they will be enforced. Since I am not a spammer, the fact that they may enforce those anti-spam terms means nothing to me; I won't be violating them. The point is, these terms do not tell me if it is OK to choose this provider or not. The terms that I want are that the provider will enforce those terms against any and every customer, whatsoever, that spams.

I understand what you are talking about where the AUP terms protect the ISP in court in case the spammer tries to sue them for termination. But this just isn't good enough. There needs to be a covenant from the provider to all customers that they will keep the network clean of all spammers. Then they can add that AUP for their own CYA purposes.