New research suggests that more than three quarters of all websites advertised through spam are clustered at just 10 domain name registrars. The data comes from millions of junk messages collected over the past year by Knujon ("no junk" spelled backwards and pronounced "new john"), an anti-spam outfit that works by convincing registrars to dismantle spam sites.
Knujon's co-founder Garth Bruen said the links in spam messages touting fake pharmacies, knock-off designer products, pirated software and phony lending institutions redirect users to a relatively minuscule subset of sites that are generally under the control of a small number of companies.
Read full story: The Washington Post
See related topics: Domain Names, Spam
Comments
Consider the Spam Balloon: Knowing that a minority of companies control most of the sites advertised in spam helps put the junk email problem into better perspective. To illustrate this consider a typical spam campaign. The emails are generated by tens of thousands of malware compromised machines and networks on the Internet. They send millions of spam messages to millions of victims. Sounds like a big problem, right? Not exactly. Because the number of actual websites advertised in those millions of messages is rather small in comparison the derivative of a spam campaign is seriously reduced. Reducing the true size even further is the fact that these real websites are held by one or maybe two registrar companies per campaign. Imagine that a spam campaign is a balloon. A balloon is actually made of a very small amount of real material, it only appears bigger because it's full of hot air. The huge volume of sent spam messages is the hot air that pushes the boundaries the Internet's resources, making the problem look bigger than it is. However, the air only stays in the balloon because it is knotted at the bottom. The registrars are this knot.
Graphic here:
http://www.knujon.com/...