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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?"
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?
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
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?
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."
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
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.)
Agis = All You Get Is Spam
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
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