By Niall Roche
The lifeblood of the spammer is email. They need to be able tosend lots of it on an ongoing basis to stay in "business". Highprofile spammers can send 80 million pieces of junk email everysingle day. Yes one single person.
ISPs all over the online world have vowed to stop spammerssending such vast amounts of email through their mail servers.Do they really keep their word? All the end user sees is thatthe spam keeps coming. There must be a loophole there somewhere.There is.
In the soft white underbelly of the internet there existssomething known as a pink contract. The term pink contract comesfrom the color of the famous tinned meat that
junk email gets its name from. A pink contract is simply abusiness agreement between the ISP and the spammer. The spammeragrees to pay the ISP to turn a blind eye to the junk emailpassing through their mail servers.
Surely this is bad business for the ISP? Well the answer to thatis both Yes and No. Yes it's bad news for the people who receivethe junk email and No it's good news for the ISPs bank balance.A monthly pink contract can pay the ISP amounts from $10,000upwards. Bearing in mind that the average work-at-home spammeraverages $100,000 net per year the above figure is small changefo the bigger junk email vendors (the guys who earn $200,000 -$400,000 per month.)
But..... the CanSpam Act 2003... surely that's going to make adifference? Of course.
Any ISP in the United States can get in serious, serious troublefor signing pink contracts. Problem is that there's a whole bigworld wide web out there and the vast majority of pink contractsare signed with overseas ISPs where US authorities have nojurisdiction - China and Russia being perfect examples.
There's no moral to this story. Spam is a huge problem that'sfinally being taken seriously by Governmental bodies. Howeveruntil they start imposing prison sentences or seizure orders onthose individuals and companies in the pink contract businessthe problem can only continue
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
