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February 25, 2005

Send-Safe goes back to Russia?

The notorious Send-Safe.com spamware site was off the air this morning. A check of the site's DNS records suggests it has moved off MCI and is now being hosted by Rostelcom in Russia.

What's more, Send-Safe is no longer receiving shopping cart services from SWREG in the UK.

I recently traded emails with Steve Lee, head of SWREG. Lee gave this explanation for why he hadn't booted Send-Safe, despite its apparent violation of SWREG's terms of service, which prohibits the sale of "software associated with spammers (for instance certain bulk e-mail software, anonymous proxies or lists, etc.)":

The problem we have is that it is good money and as spam seems to be less of an issue for *us* it becomes less important to me to pull such products. In other words I do not have the fervor of others who you are involved with and definitely less incentive. I do not think of spam as the root of all evil as much as an irritant that can be controlled.

Nonetheless, Lee said SWREG has closed the shop assigned to Send-Safe.

Now, perhaps Yahoo Groups will stop hosting the Send-Safe users group discussion list. (Send-Safe recently banned me from the group.)

[Update: a US company called Plimus is now handling online ordering for Send-Safe.]

Posted by brian at February 25, 2005 10:44 AM