On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission won an injunction shutting down an Internet Service Provider that the FTC says "recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content."
(Kyle Alcott/Dallas Morning News/KRT)Photos (1 of 1)
Gov’t slams door on ‘rogue’ Internet provider, alleging criminal activity
By Matthew Shaer | 06.04.09
The Federal Trade Commission today won an temporary order against Pricewert LLC, a notorious Internet Service Provider that has been linked to the distribution of child pornography and spam. In a lengthy press release, the FTC alleged that Pricewert had “advertised its services in the darkest corners of the Internet, including a forum established to facilitate communication between criminals.”
“Pricewert [has] actively shielded its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community, or shifting its criminal elements to other Internet protocol addresses it controlled to evade detection,” a spokesperson for the FTC wrote today.
A man answered the phone at Pricewert’s San Jose headquarters, but sounding tired, refused to comment.
Pricewert, a California-based company, had previously conducted operations under several names, including 3FN and APS Telecom. According to the FTC, the group “actively recruits and colludes with criminals seeking to distribute illegal, malicious, and harmful electronic content including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, botnet command and control servers, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.”
Effective today, the FTC has disconnected Pricewert’s servers from the Internet and frozen the company’s assets. A court will hold a preliminary injunction hearing on June 15, the FTC said.
“This is great news, and one we can hope signals the beginning of a trend,” Erik Larkin wrote on PC World’s website. “This kind of action won’t by itself stop Internet crime, but identifying and taking down these black-market service providers does much more than attempting to identify and fight individual pieces of malware. After last fall’s takedown of the McColo ISP, spam levels dropped precipitously. The bad guys eventually regrouped, but the takedown had a noticeable impact.”
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2. Dennis Cox, Fresno, Ca. | 06.05.09
Isn’t it great to hear that, in the war on cyber crime, sometimes the good guys win?
3. K.Narayanan | 06.05.09
Last week I had asked a question in Yahoo answers about eradicating pornography.
This week I got this news that FTC had won. It is good news, but the displaced people should be shown some good ways to rehabilitate.There are a lot of pornographic sites in the internet which ask for 18 years older or not.If we reply it as 18 + it allows unhindered access to the horrible websites.I think someone will take action on these also.
4. E.Umana | 06.05.09
This is good,I just hope that this is the start of a trend of aggressively going after suspect ISPs, some of the stuff alleged to have been hosted and protected by this ISP is downright disgusting and abominable.
5. S. Sandlin | 06.05.09
What a joy! It doesn’t even matter which medium supports these monsters but that a victory against them has been accomplished. Let’s hope it’s a big step in erasing one of the biggest aggressions against humanity and will continue to throw down this heinous element in all venues.
6. Joe Merchant | 06.05.09
I find it funny that everybody assumes that the adult industry advocates and accepts child porn as being ok. eradicating pornography will never happen, free speech or not, its too important to the economy and the technology that comes from these sites. Yes the Internet Porn Industry has made some very common items very affordable to everyday consumers–web cameras come to mind—without the push from porn to have better software, more stable technology and affordable bandwidth–we’d be 5 years behind where we are now–seems that its the demands from gamers and the porn industry that makes things goes faster in this world
7. Mahesh | 06.05.09
Should not these criminals be prosecuted? Just bringing down their IT infranstructure is not good enough to deter criminals.
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1. standtall | 06.05.09
Eliminating these parasites can even enhance everyone else’s internet experience by freeing bandwidth. Too bad all the spammers cannot be eradicated.