PSINet, AT&T Caught Pink-Handed Serving Up Spam

PSINet Blames Youth and Inexperience

PSINet also claims that its "pink contract" slipped through because it was handled by a less experienced member of its commercial contracts group. The PSINet employee was "too young and too green" to catch a clause in the contract that allowed Cajunnet to distribute spam using PSINet's networks, according to Robert Leahy, PSINet's senior vice president for corporate marketing and communications.

"I think it's fair to say in hindsight that this was a pink contract, and it is absolutely true, as we have admitted with great regret and red face, that one of our junior guys got duped into it," Leahy says.

In a statement issued Tuesday, PSINet adds that its Net Abuse Policy is "not negotiable, and we will not knowingly enter into service agreements that provide a license to commit Policy violations."

Leahy says service providers face "tremendous difficulties" weeding out spammers from their networks, and he points to a raft of tactics they employ in order to go about their business undetected.

"These guys basically come in and swear up and down that they're holy rollers, and then the next thing you know they've got pitch forks and horns. They change their names, and they move around," Leahy says. "It's almost like buying a firearm; we have to do a background check on these guys to use them as a customer ... and from a commercial position it's just not a viable thing to do."

Spamhaus Doubts Explanations

The Spamhaus Project remains unconvinced, and it maintains that both AT&T and PSINet were fully aware of the spamming activities going on in their networks.

In an e-mail response to questions Tuesday, Linford points to a clause in PSINet's contract where it acknowledges that the contract will allow "opt-out commercial e-mail" to be distributed "in mass quantity" by Cajunnet. "Opt-out" e-mail requires a user to actively notify a spammer that he or she no longer wishes to receive unsolicited e-mail.

"I think the ISP community as a whole needs to reexamine its ethics," Linford writes in the e-mail. "The contracts we're finding show that far from regulating themselves, some U.S. backbones are colluding with spammers to profit [from] the spam problem."