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McColo’s internet access was stopped on 11 November after journalist Brian Krebs informed its service providers of the precise nature of its business.

“We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem you were reporting and said 'Holy cow! Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them,” said Benny Ng, from Hurricane Electric,

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one of the two providers that Krebs contacted.

McColo was estimated to be responsible the the sending of roughly 75% of all spam, so its closure had an immediate impact. Security firm IronPort noticed a huge drop off in the volume of spam it was seeing as it monitored the internet: from around 190 billion emails each day down to 112 billion. Spamcop reported a similar decline.

Unfortunately, the fall is expected to be temporary, as the spammers shift their operations elsewhere in preparation for the US holiday season.

“We’re seeing a slow recovery,” IronPort product manager Nilesh Bhandari told Krebs. “We fully expect this to recover completely, and to go into the highest ever spam period during the upcoming holiday season.”