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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."
Why do they still have any link to the network? Other ISPs should cut them off if they refuse to cut off spammers.
They're just upset to get rid of those tasty, money making, high-bandwidth using spam accounts.
In related news the CEO said, "To make up for the lost revenue, we'll host pr0n. We'll be actively competing with GoatSex Guy."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Right on the day my emails for spam-blocking software were going out. Foiled again...
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
You can go to Savvis.net for the official spiel or try http://www.savvis.info/ for the truth.
I was just starting to enjoy my corrspondence to that poor cancer ridden Zimbabwean, who happens to be trapped in space!
......a 75% decrease in network traffic.
-Randy
... 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.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
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?"
But it makes me wonder if this was more of a move of desperation for Savvis. On the surface, sure - they were threatened with what amounts to a permanent blacklist. But even then.
This sig no verb.
With how slow their site is responding, I wonder if they're responsible for sending out that much spam in reality -- or maybe their connections are just flooded with the stuff.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
This only happened after Savvis was told that their entire network was about to be e-mail blocked.
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?
[Rob McCormick] disputed the figure of $2 million a month revenue from the spammers, and said the actual figure is only a tenth of that amount.
Which is to say, they bill $2 million, but spammers, being spammers, only pay 1/10th.
Can't help but how much that has to do with botting the lying thieves, and how much is the threat to block their entire network.
I worked at a major competitor (big company) of these guys for a while. Almost 50% of hosting revenue came from Porn. They were great customers. Seldom complained. More often than not, paid full price for bandwidth, and always paid their bills on time.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
All's true that is mistrusted
At first I saw the name `Savvis', and I'm thinking, never heard of them before, who's that? Then I saw the mention of C&W in the article and the light went on -- "Oh, Clueless and Witless! It all makes sense now!"
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
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.
When they cancel a spammer, make the information on the spammer public so that the spammer can be tracked and sued.
Fight Spammers!
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?
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.
He disputed the figure of $2 million a month revenue from the spammers, and said the actual figure is only a tenth of that amount.
It's not worth $2m/month for the bad publicity, how much less then $200K/month. That doesn't make sense. If you're only making $200K/month, little over $1000/spammer/month, then dump them. Why is this even being discussed?
Do you have ESP?
Wasn't Worldcom the "worldcom of the internet"?
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Depends on who runs the blocks. On "professional" blocklists, like SPEWS, the listings should disappear as soon as it is confirmed that the spammers are gone (though -- despite the lies of a number of SPEWS-haters -- SPEWS itself does not block mail, the "blocks" would then disappear from the lists of those who filter with the lists provided by SPEWS). Other, more hard-line network admins might hold off a little while, perhaps waiting until a little after the heat death of the universe before removing Savvis IP entries.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Florida has for a long time been the haven of spammers, so the State knows all eyes are on the AG's office to see how they enforce the new law. You can read more about the law, and there is a provision to report spam, on the MyFlorida web site. The only downside to their reporting procedure is that you have to fill out a form, rather than just forward the spam email, but that may change in the future.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
(From the "this is news?" department):
Found on their website
The following general actions are considered "abuse" and are strictly prohibited:
Using SAVVIS networks to transmit material that SAVVIS believes to be illegal, obscene, or inappropriate.
Forging of message headers or identity information, or taking any action with the intent of bypassing restrictions or limits on access to a specific service or site. This prohibition does not restrict the legitimate non-commercial use of pseudonymous or anonymous services.
Falsifying identity or contact information (whether given to SAVVIS, to the InterNIC, or other parties).
And found elsewhere on the same page, specifics against "spam e-mailing." That pretty much covers the actions of those who are using the system to send out unsolicited commercial e-mail.
I believe that Savvis ought to be made to completely reveal to the authorities and the Internet Community the identities, home and work addresses and telephones of those persons identified with the sending of UCEs. That might take 10 days, though it should not.
Of course that means I'll get less pr0n in my in-box....
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
If your ISP cut off connections to them, you'd probably complain when you couldn't access a LEGITIMATE site.
Which is the problem. They're so big that they have lots of legitimate customers and a few spammers.
The only way to go after them is through their reputation and their customers. Which is what happened. They don't want to be known as a spammer's network so they have to change.
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...
Savvis, isn't that the new pronunciation of "Agis"?
(Agis hosted Sanford Wallace for about a year while loudly proclaiming they weren't doing anything wrong. LOTS of people found out how to block IP ranges. Agis later repented, booted Wallace et al, but it was too late. Nobody who cared about their online reputation would choose them as a host, and Agis went belly-up not too long thereafter.)
Of course, just because a user doesn't SEE the spam, doesn't mean the spam isn't wasting bandwidth and system resources being sent and rejected/dropped.
Agis = All You Get Is Spam
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
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.
Fight Spammers!
What SPEWS and similar services do is blacklist people, and users of the blacklists can decide whether to use the blacklist to block incoming messages, or whether to use it as weighting in systems like SpamAssassin. I fairly commonly see SpamAssassin ratings that say "X points because it's in blacklist1, Y points because it's in Blacklist2, Z points because it's matches the Nigerian_3 pattern, N points because it's ALL YELLING", etc.
SPEWS does have a reputation for being overzealous, and blacklists that are way overzealous get ignored by users, or given a low SpamAssassin weighting or whatever, as opposed to more conservative and responsible blacklists. But that's a choice you can make.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
For example, were you to have a contract with me for a year of Internet service and you started to use my system to spam others, were I to summarily shut you down, you would have a cause of action to sue me for non-fulfillment of our contract.
An AUP adds those clauses to any contract in effect and prevents an ISP from being sued by a spammer for sending out spam through that ISP. The spammer sues the ISP, the ISP points to the language of the AUP and the judge tells everyone to go home.
I do agree with you that Savvis does need to take action, but their action needs to be based on the statements in their AUP, not some action that may cause them to wind up needing to defend in court.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
18 csr1-ve243.SantaClarasc8.savvis.net (66.35.194.50) 210.745 ms 211.044 ms 210.92 ms
19 66.35.212.174 (66.35.212.174) 213.524 ms 212.497 ms 212.599 ms
20 slashdot.org (66.35.250.150) 209.927 ms 210.262 ms 209.923 ms
-- Somebody stuck somewhere in a big world wide web that I can't escape from