iPrimus bans Qld spammer

Serial spammers Queensland Computer Company have been disconnected from the iPrimus network, as the retailer continues to frustrate ISPs by indiscriminantly spamming thousands of Internet users--a practice that has yet to be outlawed.

Primus Telecom's general manager of product management, development and strategy, Campbell Sallabank, says they aren't welcome back.

"No spammer is welcome back on our network," he told ZDNet Australia . "We don't single out individuals. We have a general policy".

The spam began originating from the iPrimus network almost immediately after the termination of the spammer's BigPond account last week. Queensland Computer Company have been identified as spammers since February, and have even engaged in dictionary 'attacks', where e-mail addresses are randomly guessed at by automated software.

Attempts to send mail to addresses such as adama@domain, adamb@domain, adamc@domain and so on have proven the marketing campaign is not based on opt-in e-mail addresses.

While the company has been put out of action temporarily, Sallabank concedes there's little that can be done to stop them from coming back.

"It's very difficult. All we can do is look for spikes on our outgoing mail server... if it looks like spam we can disable the account," he said.

Until new laws are passed, iPrimus will just continue to enforce its policy.

"We do that systematically anyway on our accounts... but once again it's not an easy task, and when you've got such huge mail volumes its not easy to detect an overall spike," he said.

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Talkback 3 comments

    Does anyone know the 'physical address' of the Qld spammer? If so post it here. It will be interesting to see what they think when some of there victims choose to turn up un-announced and uninvited.Anonymous -- 23/06/03

    Does anyone know the 'physical address' of the Qld spammer? If so post it here. It will be interesting to see what they think when some of there victims choose to turn up un-announced and uninvited.

    >Queensland Computer Company have been >identified as spammers since February, And now, four months and millions of spams later, their ISP finally gets rid of them. I wonder how many other spammers they host for months before they Anonymous -- 24/06/03

    >Queensland Computer Company have been
    >identified as spammers since February,

    And now, four months and millions of spams later, their ISP finally gets rid of them. I wonder how many other spammers they host for months before they do anything?

    Most ISP's don't consider kicking a spammer offline something that requires a press release.
    Normally it isn't noteworthy. But if an ISP rarely gets rid of their spammers, I suppose maybe it's a big deal to them.

    I suspect that iPrimus was either on, or about to be added to, various blacklists, and that they dumped their spammer to avoid that, not because they actually care. If they cared, they would have shut down the spammer when they first found out about them, in February.

    To anonymous # 2; iPrimus started getting hit last week after Queensland Computer Company's Telstra Bigpond was ahut down. iPrimus did the right thing promtly. It was Telstra that let it drag on for 6 months. To anonymous #1; BettMrDamage -- 24/06/03

    To anonymous # 2;
    iPrimus started getting hit last week after Queensland Computer Company's Telstra Bigpond was ahut down.
    iPrimus did the right thing promtly. It was Telstra that let it drag on for 6 months.

    To anonymous #1;
    Better yet, find out the physical address, and sign them up for the Church of Scientology snail-mail list, shop-by-mail outlets, charities etc.
    Give em back in the real world what they are dumping onto us on the web. :)

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