Powercomm Becomes Spamming Hotbed
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
Powercomm, South Korea's third-largest Internet service provider (ISP), continues to offer a hangout for the world's worst spammers, according to Spamhaus Wednesday.
The international anti-spam agency notes Powercomm hosts five Internet protocol (IP) addresses abused by blacklisted professional senders of unsolicited junk mail.
This means Powercomm can be labeled as an ISP that suffers from serious hitches because the Seoul-based company has hosted multiple blacklisted spammers throughout this year.
Spamhaus defines any listing of blacklisted spammers a major problem and more than two listings are a strong signal that the ISP is in trouble.
As of Wednesday, only a handful of domestic ISPs contain multiple blacklisted spammers and Powercomm is the only major player in the broadband competition to meet the condition.
Powercomm has more than 10 percent of the whole customer pool of the high-speed Internet market with 1.5 million subscribers, chasing just KT and Hanaro Telecom.
On a more negative note, a global spam king, dubbed Leo Kuvayev, lurks in the Internet pipeline of Powercomm, the affiliate of LG Group.
Spamhaus ranks the Russian, notorious for his use of an enormous number of domains using fake registration information, as the worst unwanted mail sender on the planet.
In late 2005, Kuvayev was fined $37 million by a court in Massachusetts together with six of his business partners for using a set of different Hotmail accounts to blast the unsuspecting world with spam.
Powercomm's hosting of spammers contrasts with other local ISPs, which have jettisoned spammers as demonstrated by the country's advance on the world's worst spamming list.
Korea placed third in the list for two consecutive years, 2004 and 2005, chasing the United States and China but has substantially improved to seventh spot.
Currently, the country has a total of 163 spammers. The U.S. tops the list with 1,930, followed by China with 467 and Russia with 241. Japan came fifth with 167.