Some software is too effective for its own good. Take one tool used by spammers to penetrate regional networks.
After receiving angry protests by Internet service providers, a software publisher has discontinued a potent tool that collects the email-address lists maintained by regional ISPs.
"GeoList Professional has been removed from the EarthOnline product line," EarthOnline said in a letter to its customers. The company said the software was designed to create email-address lists to target a mass mailing to a specific state or region.
Spammers can and do use the product, however, to more effectively target and distribute their unsolicited commercial email messages.
The company announced Monday it had discontinued the software because "misuse of GeoList Professional by certain companies and individuals has reportedly made it difficult on the ISPs." Company representatives were contacted Wednesday but declined further comment.
EarthOnline's actions were in response to a swift and effective online meeting of ISP minds over the weekend. The ISPs set up discussion groups to discuss legal and technical solutions for combating the particularly destructive new type of spamming tool.
"This is a phenomenon where lots of Internet providers had to come together and approach a problem without being competitors," Tom Travis, president of Surf-ICI, one of the targeted ISPs, said Wednesday. "For the most part, we all avoided having to spend money on the problem, using tools we had at hand."
