FTC Closes Down Worst Spam and Botnet Provider In The United States

Taking a stiff stance to crack down on cybercrime activities, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday announced that it had shut down a rogue internet service provider (ISP), accused of hosting and distributing content related to child pornography, spam, malware, etc. 

Pricewert LLC, the ISP in question, which operated under several names, including APS Telecom and 3FN, had its web connection unplugged, after a San Jose, Calif., district court judge ordered for the shut down of the ISP. 

The court issued a “temporary restraining order” to forbid the ISP's illicit activities and necessitated its upstream internet providers as well as data centres to stop offering services. Pricewert has now become completely defunct and the ruling further freezes its assets. 

In its complaint, FTC claimed that the service wasn't apparently meant for average consumers. Instead, it was promoted “in the darkest corners of the Internet” and was intended to cybercriminals who seek to put malicious websites over the web, but need servers and bandwidth to do the same.   

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In addition to this, the complaint from FTC further notified that the ISP protected its clientele by either transferring its felonious elements to other IP addresses it held to escape detection, or by simply avoiding the take down requests issued by the internet security community. 

Vincent Weafer, VP of Symantec Security Response, asserted that his firm had provided the data collected from its global internet sensor network about malicious content dished up by Pricewert, and informed that the ISP controlled as many as 600 IP addresses.      

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