[OT] Spamhaus charges that MCI earns $5M a year from "spam gangs"

["Kang, Joseph S." <jo...@netex.com>]

MCI 'makes $5m a year from spam gangs'
By John Leyden
Published Monday 7th February 2005 18:29 GMT

Spamhaus has slammed MCI for hosting a website selling spamming software
that is allegedly integral to the illegal trade in compromised PCs. The site
- send-safe.com - sells spamware called Send Safe which uses
broadband-connected PCs infected by viruses such as SoBig to distribute junk
mail.

More than 70 per cent of spam comes from PCs infected with viruses or
trojans, according to Spamhaus, a leading anti-spam organisation. By using
compromised machines (proxies in spammer parlance) - instead of open mail
relays or unscrupulous hosts - spammers can bypass basic anti-spam defences,
such as IP address blacklists. Spamhaus reckons 80,000-100,000 new PCs every
week are infected, leading to ever increasing volumes of spam. Spammers and
their coding allies are coming up with new tricks to make the approach even
more effective, with Send-Safe's developers as the forefront of this illegal
activity.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/07/spamhaus_mci/

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-Joe K.
Systems Administrator
Network Executive Software, Inc.
888-604-5573 / postmaster(at)netex(dot)com