Companies responsible for the most spam

For many years whenever people think of heavy spam use they see two countries as being the leading distributors of it. There is indeed heavy spam coming out of China and Russia, and their telecom companies are responsible for a great deal of spamming worldwide, but according to the Spamhaus project (the leading anti-spam NGO) the number one spam telecom company in the world is Francetelecom. Spamhaus has recorded a total of 34 primary complaints against the French telecommunications giant. Of these 34 spam-related offenses carried out by IP addresses under Francetelecoms’ brand there are numerous infractions of spam hosting, fraudulent spam, and spam phishing being conducted, making life difficult for email spam blockers. Francetelecom has servers on four continents and employs about 5000 people. They have researchers, developers and marketers in nine different companies and each Francetelecom lab is integrated into the local customs of the region they are based.

Spamhaus has a list called the ROKSO list – a Register of Known Spam Operators - with names of the 100 spam operators who are responsible for 80 percent of all internet spam in the world. Gradually as the net tightens around these 100 individuals, internet spam will gradually be able to be reduced en masse as the servers required by these people are shut off to them. We’ll see what this list does for long term email spam filtering.

The number two on the list is a company called hostfresh.com. According to their website, Hotfresh was started in 2000 by a group of talented web developers to better supply companies with effective internet access. Hostfresh has been home to three major spam gangs for the last few years that have been systematically exploiting Hostfresh as a means of committing fraud and cheating people out of their money and time. According to Spamhaus, the majority of service providers try their hardest to keep spammers off their networks but because of corporate greed, incompetence, or general misunderstanding there are still is a great deal of spamming going on. Hostfresh has 29 infractions against it and is home to three major spamming gangs operating on the web.

The number one US major service provider (anti spam headache creator) to rank on the list is Verizon. Verizon has a strange history when it comes to dealing with spam. For a period Verizon blocked all incoming emails from European-based IP addresses. One could only receive an email if the specific contact was marked as safe by the Verizon user. Yet Verizon has 26 recorded spam violations on Spamhaus and has 16 known spam gangs operating on its servers. Verizon seems to be the worst US based spam violator operating on the continent.

Now that being able to track spam has become more advanced and the means in which to find those who are responsible for the majority of it is becoming easier, one would think that the days of spam would be numbered. Unfortunately for every time we begin to catch up, the spammers figure out another way to stay just ahead of those who are trying to stop them. Fighting spam requires a high level of vigilance. Wherever there is money to be made by illegitimate means there will be people clamoring for it.