Pejorative term for an internet service provider that permits or
even encourages spam mailings from its systems. The
plural is spamhausen. There is a web
page devoted to tracking
spamhausen.
The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's Cyber
Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997. The
anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on Usenet as Spam Freedom Day,
but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest various murky corners of
the net. Since prosecution of spammers became routine under the junk-fax
laws and statues specifically targeting spam, spamhausen have declined in
relative importance; today, hit-and-run attacks by spammers using
relay rape and
throwaway accounts on reputable ISPs seem to account for most of the
flow.
