Gadgetopia

Interesting story from the BBC about giant service provider Savvis’ internal debate over whether to expunge spammers from their network. The article details their angst over hosting spammers vs their love of that sweet green cash.

Alif Terranson, a former Savvis employee who was responsible for keeping the network clean, objected to the spammers and wrote a 200-page report detailing his complaints about the spammers.

He told the BBC: “One of the Vice Presidents told me, ‘Take no action against any Cable & wireless customer - they are profitable and they are off limits.’

“He was talking specifically about that 200-page report which at the time was 95 spammers. When I left Savvis in April it was almost 100, today it is 148.

Two hundred pages? I don’t like spam, but I doubt I could write that much on it. Maybe he should have mailed it a page at a time with subjects like ‘H3RE’5 TH4T B1G SP4M RE.PoRT!!! F4NTASTIC REEDING!!!’

After being threatened with blacklisting by anti-spam groups, they finally decided to give the spammers their walking papers, but it goes to show you just how hard spam is to get rid of. The lost profits of these customers is small potatoes to the world’s second largest provider, but Mom & Pop providers would probably be loathe to get rid of them.

Via Multiple Sources.