The news will come as a surprise to many spam industry watchers, Infosecurity notes, but can only be good news for internet users – and their ISPs – who have been plagued by the problem of rising levels of spam mail for some time now.
Also known in Russian circles to have links with the Glavmed sponsorship scheme – and thought to have close links to the Russian Business Network – Spamit is known to be responsible for large volumes of illegal spamming of Canadian and US pharmacy websites.
Like the GenBucks and SanCash programmes, Spamit offers internet operators capable of generating large volumes of email a cash payment, which has resulted in the scheme – which is normally hidden from internet users – allegedly being responsible for eyewatering volumes of internet data.
According to unconfirmed newswire reports the Spamit administrators are said to have become disillusioned with the increasing public profile for their once secret affiliate scheme.
A closure message was posted to the site late last week noted that "because of the numerous negative events happened last year and the risen attention to our affiliate program we've decided to stop accepting the traffic from 1.10.2010."
"We find the decision the most appropriate in this situation. It provides avoiding the sudden work stop which leads to the program collapse and not paying your profit", the notice said.
"In our case the whole profit will be paid normally. All possible frauds are excluded. Please transfer your traffic to other affiliate programs till 1.10.2010. Thank you for your co-operation! We appreciate your trust very much."
According to IT security writer Brian Krebs, Dmitry Samosseiko, senior manager of SophosLabs Canada, wrote last year that Spamit affiliates are thought to responsible for managing some of the world's most disruptive, infectious and sophisticated collections of botnets such as Storm, Waledec and – potentially – Conficker.
But, says Krebs, "don't expect Canadian Pharmacy sites to go away just because Spamit shutters its operation. Samosseiko and many other spam watchers believe Spamit is the sibling entity of a much larger pharmacy affiliate program known as 'Glavmed’, which also promotes Canadian Pharmacy branded sites."
"Through periodic statements on the Glavmed forum, Glavmed administrators have steadfastly maintained that their programme does not tolerate spam, and that its affiliates only employ legal search engine optimisation techniques to help people find their sites when searching online for specific name-brand medications", he noted on his security blog.