Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline

Security Fix
WashPost

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted on Tuesday after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline.

Experts say the precipitous drop-off in spam comes from Internet providers unplugging McColo Corp., a hosting provider in Northern California that was the home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent of all spam each day.

In an alert sent out Wednesday morning, e-mail security firm IronPort said:

In the afternoon of Tuesday 11/11, IronPort saw a drop of almost 2/3 of overall spam volume, correlating with a drop in IronPort's SenderBase queries. While we investigated what we thought might be a technical problem, a major spam network, McColo Corp., was shutdown, as reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday evening.

(More here.)