"Throughout the entire controversy, principals with EstDomains and EstHost have maintained they do not knowingly allow customers to run illegal websites.

"We don't provide the service for spammers/phishers etc, and we never did," Konstantin Poltev, registry liaison for EstDomains, wrote in an email to The Register on Wednesday. "

BWAH hah hah! I can't even count the number of times I've reported phishing sites and sites used to spread the various flavors of W32/Zlob to ESThosts. To my knowledge, no action has ever been taken against such sites. "Do not knowingly allow customers to run illegal websites" my fanny.

Getting deaccredited couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

Its true, because the dont ask about it. They closed their eyes to it. Its like when a landlord collects rent check through the mail. They can say hey I never knew about the illegal stuff that was happening in the house. I don't live there and I did not notice the empty beer bottles, burned out cars, hookers on the side walk. The side walk is not my property

<quote>... illegal stuff ... I did not notice the empty beer bottles, burned out cars, hookers on the side walk.</quote>

Since when was empty beer bottles part of something illegal? Besides them being empty of course... And I for one wouldn't always mind a (possibly scantily clad) woman of independent means on my sidewalk. :-)

The white one with the large fur collar please...

They should deregister .ru and .es registrars aswell

I get thousands of spam emails from domains in these TLD's every day.

Alien because people from these places usually end up illegal aliens.

You can add .cn to that list as well. I've set my spam filter to automatically reject all emails originating from .ru and .cn domains (in the headers as well as the Sender field) and it's cut my spam by two thirds. Since I don't know anyone in those countries it's no big loss to me if nobody living there can communicate with me!

Nuff said...

I wonder if this sudden attempt at good behaviour by EstDomains/Hosts explains the recent drop off of spam I've been seeing for the last day or so.

Sadly not dead yet, accprding to http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2008/10/30/1652442.aspx

It looks like Estdomains have come up with some handwringing excuses which ICANN wants to consider. Let's hope that ICANN stick to their guns on this one.

from one crook, then do they diluted amoungst the general flotsam of registrars or do they just go to another criminal registrar ?

AC - because I'm a registrar and don't want to be dumped on

Dump them

...and you can add .com as well. Trouble is, spam doesn't come from spammers. It comes from the machines in their botnets, which may be located anywhere in the world.