So lately, my inbox has been flooded with an unusually large amount of spam This spam is advertising Web sites with URLs such as klhrvbhqw dot com, hyaiocgsk dot com, dcghffxba dot com, and ipwbquigi dot com — you know, nonsensical domains made up of random letters, usually a sure bet that it’s a throwaway spam domain the spammer plans to use once for a single spam run and discard.
All of these domains are hosted at the same ISP, an outfit I’ve never heard of before called Suavemente.
Now, two things about Suavemente scream “bulletproof spam host” to me. The first is they didn’t bother to register the .com; their only URL is suavemente.net. The second is that they’re headquartered in the US, but their front page proudly screams High-speed offshore. In the world of ISPs, “offshore” normally means “we allow our users to violate American law, safe in the knowledge that their servers can not be subpoenaed or subject to American jurisdiction.”
So at first blush, Suavemente stinks of “owned by spammers, run by spammers for spammers.” However, I can’t find them on the usual compilations of known rogue ISPs; they are listed in the ISP hall of shame, but that’s about it.
And they respond to abuse complaints. They don’t respond by shutting down their spammers, but they do respond nonetheless. Text and headers of an email I just received from Suavemente’s abuse department