Top ten spam ISPs

The Spamhaus ISP spam issue ranking table currently shows Google in third place According to spam watchdog Spamhaus, spam continues to flood the internet, at least in part because of complicity by some ISPs. On their website under the tab – Worst Networks, Spamhaus maintains a list of the current top ten worst offenders, which is automatically updated every 24 hours. While most people might not recognise most of the providers on the current list, what is shocking is that the world famous search engine, Google, earns a number three ranking. Although perhaps this is not so unusual because of Google's shear size and popularity. Many of the 31 spam issues currently listed (Tuesday January 6th 2009) for Google are either advance fee scams, or spam redirectors.

There are also tabs on the Spamhaus Project site for – Worst Countries and – Worst Spammers. Their current worst country is the United States, with three times as many issues as any other country and their current worst spammer is the, oh so familiar, Canadian Pharmacy. According to Spamhaus, over 80 per cent of spam targeted at Internet users in North America and Europe, is generated by a hard-core group of around 200 known professional spam gangs whose names, aliases and operations are documented in Spamhaus' Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database.

The Spamhaus Project is an international non-profit organisation whose mission is to track the Internet's spam operations, to provide dependable real time anti-spam protection for Internet networks, to work with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation. The Spamhaus sponsors include Vodaphone and Easynet.

Founded in 1998, the Spamhaus Project is based in Geneva, Switzerland and London, UK and is run by a dedicated team of 26 investigators and forensics specialists located in 10 countries.

(trk)