Are Internet Service Providers the key to the world’s fight against spam?

In its latest compilation of the world’s 10 worst spammers, Spamhaus reported that spam continues to plague the Internet because “a small number of large Internet Service Providers sell service knowingly to professional spammers for profit, or do nothing to prevent spammers operating from their networks.”

Although all networks claim to be anti-spam, Spamhaus continued,

“some network executives factor revenue made from hosting known spam gangs into corporate policy decisions to continue to sell services to spam operations. Others simply decide that closing the holes in their end-user broadband systems that allow spammers access would be too costly to their bottom lines.”

This is quite an alarming trend. But that is true.

Of the three “Top 10″ reports regularly published by Spamhaus, the Top 10 worst Spam Service ISPs report is the most “active” worst list. For example, of the top 10 worst ISPs last May, six were replaced by newcomers.

Hopefully, the six ISPs booted out of the top 10 decided to clean up. And obiously, the vacuum was simply filled up by other ISPs looking for ways to generate revenue.

The above screen is the world’s 10 worst spam service ISPs as at yesterday, 24 September 2009.

Below is the report as at last 8 May. Note the changes compared to the latest report.

The two other reports by Spamhaus, the Top 10 Worst Spam Origin Countries and the Top 10 Worst Spammers could just be the result of poorly controlled ISPs based in those countries or being tolerant to spamming activities in their network.

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Tagged as: ISP, Spam