Various news and internet security agencies are reporting between 35% and 75% of internet email spam has dropped over the last few days, after a rogue San Francisco/Bay Area ISP, McColo, was disconnected from the internet by its upstream provider.
| Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline |
After reports of large amounts of suspicious traffic coming from its data centre, McColo had its internet access provisions terminated, resulting in the almost instantaneous drop in global spam traffic.
On a personal level, I’ve noticed that the total amount of email traffic hitting my own mail server has dropped to almost zero. Normally about 95% of my SMTP traffic is spam.
| Spam Sees Big Nosedive As Rogue ISP McColo Knocked Offline |
Unfortunately, it is likely that the drop will only be temporary – the spammers will not take long to set themselves up elsewhere – but this victory for anti-spam crusaders demonstrates that a global approach to the problem can have a significant effect on the problem.