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Spamhaus: MCI Makes $5M A Year In Spam Profits
An anonymous reader submits "According to a new Spamhaus report, MCI makes $5 million a year hosting spammers and illegal spamware. MCI/UUNET has long topped the Spamhaus spam supporting ISPs list, with nearly 200 active SBL entries. MCI even took on spammers such as iMedia, when they were terminated by Savvis in their half-hearted response to leaked pro-spam memos."
with a compiny that brig is % million that much? maybe 500 million but only 5?
And in any event, one person's `spamware' may very well be another person's tool of choice for sending out mail to a large (and yet legitimate) mailing list.
If you run your own zombie- mailserver, you're competing with them on a lucrative business of theirs.
ISPs should impose an E-embargo against MCI because they support spammers. All mail and traffic from MCI should be blocked until MCI stops helping spammers.
I'm not defending MCI/UUNET, or even sure if this is the same MCI that this story is about, but an MCI's AUP:
Email Sending unsolicited mail messages, including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements, is explicitly prohibited. A user shall not use another site's mail server to relay mail without the express permission of the site.
Which is strange because in the article it mentions "MCI is the only American, and indeed only Western network, where this spam support activity is 'not against our policy,'".
Or does MCI just post that as it's AUP on it's site to cover it's back if it wants to close an account for spamming in the future, or to comply with possible regulations etc?
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Dear sir,
I am a former member of the MCI ISP, here in my home country on Nigeria. Recently we have aquired the rights to $5 million ($5,000,000) US, which is ours to dispose of by rights, but we urgently need a business partner in Europe to help realise this sum. For use of your services we are prepared to offer you %20 of net proceeds. Please do not discuss this with anyone, since confidentiallity is paramount...
Please reply with your name, contact address & phone number & bank details for further discussions..
Yours
AA Albalone..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
If as TFA reads "MCI is the only American, and indeed only Western network, where this spam support activity is 'not against our policy'," then Congress should rule their (in)activity explicitly against the law. Most ISPs already agree as a matter of their own policy. Yes, the spammers will go elsewhere, but the U.S. should first clean our own house. Writing this law (or lines in a law) seems like a no-brainer.
BG
MCI is a $27 billion company. (according to http://global.mci.com/about/investor_relations/fun damentals/).
Corporately, they don't care about $5M revenue streams. If it's not a homerun, billion dollar profit potential, it's not going to be developed.
I doubt MCI is actively pursuing SPAM as a business venture. Not unless they believe it's going to generate billions in the next five years. Otherwise, this is a non-story, about MCI making a few pennies because they aren't 100% vigilant.
ShoutingMan.com
To paraphrase an anecdote used as an example in Dickie's book :
Johnson and Johnson's Corporate credo lists J&J's responsibilities in this order 1) to the consumer 2) to the employees 3) to the community 4) to the shareholders (meaning to making money.)
When Tylenol (a J&J product) was tampered with in Chicago, resulting in the deaths of several people, the local police advised J&J that it was an isolated incident, and that a recall was not necessary.
J&J recalled anyway (a $350 million process) and consumers flocked back to Tylenol when it was reintroduced to the market with new tamper proof packaging. Since consumers had proof that J&J cared about them, J&J ended up making money.
The moral of the story is that caring about your consumers may be less profitable in the short run but that in the long run companies that put the consumer first do better. It's obvious to me that MCI does not put the consumer first. Point 4 on the J&J credo is point 1 in MCI's strategy. MCI just lost one customer.
Aren't we talking about the same MCI/Worldcomm that cooked their books 2 years ago? So bad accounting practices don't seem to be the only questionable business in which they participate.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Why is this news? Almost every bandwidth provider in the country will house spammers so long as they aren't breaking any laws. Internap, the largest bandwidth provider in the states, houses a good number of spammers even tho it's "against policy" to send unsolicited email. If the almighty dollar is involved don't expect companies to be "moral."
I stole this
As a former employee of UUNet, whom, in turn, got bought out by Worldcom, which was once and now is again called MCI...*breath*...I can say that my pop.net POP3 account I had when I employee there remained active for at least 4 years after I left in 2000. It only got deleted after I stopped checking it for over a month.
What does this mean? Well, speaking from experience, they don't have nearly as many people monitoring this stuff as they should. So, my guess is that this SPAM abuse is the result of neglect. However, as with most any telecom/IT company, Marketing and Sales drives the business, the techies are beholden to the machinations of the Marketroids and Salesbots. This could be their bright idea.
Yeah - they may inadvertently make $5M from spammers - but I bet the cost of spam to them is a LOT more than that. It follows that this is not an intentional part of their business model - but merely the residue of spammers that they've been unable to eliminate.
www.sjbaker.org
We've already got competing solutions to some of the problems with SMTP, but not a lot of people are using them. Most people don't encrypt email, S/MIME still is not widely used.
What do you expect? Worldcom/MCI was run by criminals. Their former CEO, Bernie Ebbers, is on trial right now in New York for fraud and conspiracy.
Your problem is someone else feature. SMTP allows things such as anonymous mail which was considered important in emails early days. The real problem is someone sees anonymity as a business venture and the suckers fall for it. If you remove that, then the spamers will just lead longer paper trails which will cost them slightly more but wont stop anything. After all these guys are going out and paying cash for T3 setups fees and monthly fees in advance for a circuit they expect to get a few days use out of. They will be happy to comply with any sill new rules an advanced email system will provide.
X.400 fixed all the problems. You can buy a pateneted solution today that fixes all your email problem but it costs several tens of thousands of dollars per year in license fees alone to run an x.400 system.
The part of the AUP that you are quoting only prohibits the sending of spam. The article is talking about "spam support" which includes other things, such as web site hosting.
From the article:
"MCI Worldcom's official position on the issue is that MCI can't stop their spam gangs selling proxy hijacking spamware from MCI's network as that would be 'censoring' the distribution and sale of illegal proxy hijacking software.
MCI is the only American, and indeed only Western network, where this spam support activity is "not against our policy". Spamhaus maintains that MCI's 'protected speech' excuses for servicing known spam gangs and proxy spamware distribution sites are dishonest and non-sensical in the face of the Internet's spam epidemic."
No spamming is now specifically LEGAL in the United States thanks to the CAN SPAM bill. You just can't do things like fake reply-to lines and you have to give an opt-out method; there are a few other regulations too that don't come to mind.
The Nigerian thing and viral spam has always been illegal as they constitute fraud and vandalism (repectively). But they aren't usually described as spam and won't ever be effected by legislation or probably anything else other than email filters.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Could someone tell me the rationale for the Slashdot crowd supporting the file sharing programs/networks because they can be used for legit purposes and the "owners" stay out of the mix so to speak, and then on the other hand, slaming MCI for basically doing the same thing in this case? Sounds hypocritical to me.
They've also had some of the highest fines when it comes to violating the do-not-call list.
Example
I've found our mail server blocked by several smaller RBL's merely because our Class C is part of MCI's pool. Granted that most ISP's don't use these small personal RBL's, but it isn't a good sign when someone will block MCI's entire IP block because of the amount of spam originating within their network.
:-(
I wish they were still just uuNet.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Those sleazebags make far more than a mere $5 million from spammers. Whenever each of their customers are getting spammed, they're only too happy to send them the bill for extra-bandwidth consumed (plenty of people have T-1 or above high-speed connections that are rated by used bandwidth).
I've worked for a major hosting provider, and I can
tell you, hosting spammers is a money-loosing proposition. Our company used to host some spammers, of the "following the letter (but not spirit) of the law", "We're not spammers! <wink-wink nudge-nudge>"
variety. Some of them were huge accounts, including our biggest customer.
None of them were worth it. The spammers themselves were a huge drain on our support dept, and many of our other customers were constantly complaining because of our IP blocks being blacklisted.
Finally, we bit the bullet, and showed all of the spamhouses the door (like I said, including our biggest customer). It was a good, and very profitable, move. Within two months, all of our IPs were off the blacklists, our support costs dropped, and our reputation went up, attracting more customers (and big ones, at that).
Moral of the story:
1) Hosting spammers is a bad idea, for business as well as moral, reasons.
2) (The big point) Blacklists work. Very. Well.