Whose Side Is IronPort On?
from the playing-both-sides-against-each-other dept
Last week we reported that popular anti-spam filtering company SpamCop was getting bought by IronPort. Later in the day, a friend of mine instant messaged me, saying, "Last I heard, IronPort makes servers specifically for sending spam." I'll admit I didn't know that much about IronPort, but now the NY Times is also pointing out that IronPort is known for selling the best systems for bulk commercial emailing, though, they swear the machines are only being used for legitimate marketing. Still, there's plenty to be concerned about - considering that some of IronPort's customers are currently on SpamCop's block list. While they insist that they're going to leave SpamCop entirely separate, it certainly could get tricky over time. The article also mentions, by the way, that IronPort really bought SpamCop over the summer - and only admitted it when reporters started looking into the story. That's not a good sign - since SpamCop has had a lot of problems recently, which I'd hoped would be solved by having a little financial backing. Instead, it appears that many of the problems occurred after they already had that backing.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The best thing that can happen now ...
Any idiot who buys a product from a company which both creates, and then tries to delete spam gets what they ask for.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IronPort is also trying to kill Google AdWords
Seems that IronPort does not understand what a good corporate citizen does...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]