Two ISPs (Internet Service Provider) in the United States stopped offering service to a web hosting company involved in spam, and that’s reduced the global amount of spam e-mail sent over the past two weeks. McColo Corporation, in San Jose, was also involved in several criminal activities aside from spam, including child pornography. Spam mail has decreased 70% after the company was booted off the Internet on November the 11th. McColo supported some of the largest botnets, and criminal organizations involved in child pornography used the McColo servers. As cover, the company’s web site promoted it as a legitimate business operating out of Delaware, with servers located in San Jose. An interesting fact states that the company’s partners included Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard.

The two ISP companies that pulled the plug on McColo yesterday morning are Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing, which took this decision after finding out that McColo was involved in criminal activities from a Washington Post reporter. Unfortunately, it will be very hard to charge and imprison the people behind the company, and that’s because some of its backers are located in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, there will be other spammers ready to take McColo’s place and, therefore, the numbers will again increase, especially during the holidays. Even if the government already prosecuted people believed be spammers, if they’re located overseas, it becomes much more difficult to identify them. In the past few years, several high-profile spammers have been shut down and given prison sentence.

Reports presenting McColo’s activity noted that the millions of spam messages sent ensured the company’s clients a very good traffic, with more than 20,000 daily visitors fooled into clicking the links present on the Web site. Anyway, as previously mentioned, it’s just a matter of days before former clients regroup and find new ways of getting their ads to consumers. This can only mean that we must enjoy the spam-silence as long as we have it.