McColo and the Difficulty of Fighting Spam

CAUCE's own Ray Everett-Church writes: It may be a truism that "little things mean a lot," but in the world of spam, flipping a single switch can have huge consequences that span the globe. We saw that concept reinforced this past week when McColo Corp., an Internet hosting firm based in San Jose, Calif., had its Internet connection shut off by its upstream connectivity providers on suspicion that McColo was serving as a command and control center for various spamming "bot net" operations as well as a base of operations for various other unsavory activities. Of course everyone, even McColo, is innocent until proven guilty. But in the days following the disconnection, global spam volumes have reportedly dropped by nearly two-thirds. I suppose it could be a coincidence... Read the rest here.