Infamous ISP Intercage (also known as Atrivo) has been knocked off line. Their upstream provider, Pacific Internet Exchange terminated their service. Intercage’s president, Emil Kacperski, blames Spamhaus. Spamhaus, an anti-spam organization that puts together a widely used blacklist, has been very critical of Intercage for years. It placed Pacific Internet Exchange on its blacklist on September 12th, and although a PIE spokeperson refused comment, it’s highly likely they cut off Intercage as a result,

Spam, phishing, identity theft, and online job scams are just some of the fastest growing types of crime today. Cybercrime is a growing business, netting millions for spammers, hackers, and malware authors, and a new study by the Center for American Progress says the US isn’t doing a thing about it. CAP, a think tank, surveyed all 50 states and discovered that 24 of them had online fraud among their top consumer complaints.

Malware, spyware, and phishing cost US consumers over $7 billion dollars last year. Yes, you read that right, $7 billion! Much of that comes from lost productivity, identity theft, and fraud such as the 419 or Nigeria scams. Despite this, the study didn’t find many prosecutions of online criminals.