Today some servers in California were shutdown for spam related activities effectively dropping the amount of spam sent by roughly 66%. Wow! 2/3 of the worlds spam eliminated in one swift blow.

Unfortunately for us, this is but a mild setback for spammers. They will regroup and find a new home to host their activities.

It is still unsure if the hosting provider, McColo Corporation, will even be held legally responsible even though they are known as being friends of the bad guys, specifically with their involvement in botnets.

A study recently showed that 1 out of 12.5 million spam emails were responded to. This corresponds to 8×10^-8% response rate. Not worth it for spammers you think? The study estimates that this corresponds to revenue of 7,000$ per day. Its fair to say the quantity comes before quality.

There seems to be money to make and until this is no longer true spam will stay with us.

For some reason or another this news reminded me of a great Woody Allen quote from Annie Hall:

[In California]
Annie Hall: It’s so clean out here.
Alvy Singer: That’s because they don’t throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.