The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation, based in both London and Geneva, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to track email spammers and spam-related activity. 
The name spamhaus, a pseudo-German expression, was coined by Linford to refer to an Internet service provider, or other firm, which spams or knowingly provides service to spammers. Amongst other things, Spamhaus listed the 10 Worst Spammers in the World and they update the list frequently.
The Spamhaus Project is responsible for compiling several widely used anti-spam lists. Many internet service providers and email servers use the lists to reduce the amount of spam that reaches their users. In 2006, the Spamhaus services protected 650 million email users, including the European Parliament, US Army, the White House and Microsoft, from billions of spam emails a day.
Spamhaus is also notorious for blacklisting IPs, Domains without much consultation or notices. A good example is when they blacklisted Google Docs IPs. They also blacklisted CyberBunker which is quite renowned for providing BulletProof Hosting and inadvertently blacklisted many legit clients causing the first of large scale DDoS attack in recent memory. [Source: Wiki]
Up to 80% of spam targeted at internet users around the world is generated by a hard-core group of around 100 known persistent spam gangs whose names, aliases and operations are documented in Spamhaus’ Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database.
This TOP 10 chart of ROKSO-listed spammers is based on Spamhaus views of the highest threat, least repentant, most persistent, and generally the worst of the career spammers causing the most damage on the internet currently.
As of 23 November 2016 the world’s worst spammers and spam gangs are:
|
1
|
Canadian Pharmacy – Ukraine A long time running pharmacy spam operation. They send tens of millions of spams per day using botnet techniques. Probably based in Eastern Europe, Ukraine/Russia. Host spammed web sites on botnets and on bulletproof Chinese web hosting. |
|
2
|
Dante Jimenez / Aiming Invest – United States Spamwarez, lists, “bulletproof” hosting in the finest South Florida tradition. Working with worst cybercriminal botnet spammers. Now mostly involved in massive botnet spamming with hosting on hacked servers and Eastern European hosters. |
|
3
|
Yair Shalev / Kobeni Solutions – United States High volume snowshoe spammer from Florida, (former?) partner-in-spam of ROKSO spammer Darrin Wohl. Son-in-law of ROKSO-listed spammer Dan Abramovich. Sued for fraud by the US FTC in 2014. |
|
4
|
Michael Boehm and Associates – United States Snowshoe spam organization that uses large numbers of inexpensive, automated VPS hosting IPs and domains in whatever TLD is currently cheapest to send high volumes of spam to extremely dirty, scraped lists. Operates under many business and individual names. |
|
5
|
Michael Lindsay – United States Lindsay’s iMedia Networks is a full-fledged spam-hosting operation serving bulletproof hosting at high premiums to well known ROKSO-listed spammers. His customers spam via botnet zombies with spam payloads hosted offshore, tunneled back to his servers. He and the gang have been hijacking (stealing) IP address space from companies for years to spam from. Illegal in the USA. |
|
6
|
Yambo Financials – Ukraine Tied into distribution and billing for child, animal, and incest-porn, pirated software, and pharmaceuticals. Run their own merchant services (credit-card “collection” sites) set up as a fake “bank.” |
|
7
|
Peter Severa / Peter Levashov – Russian Federation A spammer who writes and sells virus-spamming spamware and botnet access. Is probably involved in the writing and releasing of viruses & trojans. One of the longest operating criminal spam-lords on the internet. Works with many other Eastern Euro and US based botnet spammers. Was a partner of American spammer Alan Ralsky. |
|
8
|
Michael Persaud – United States Long time snowshoe type spammer, recently raided by FBI. |
|
9
|
Alvin Slocombe / Cyber World Internet Services – United States Bulletproof spam host operating Cyber World Internet Services / e-Insites, and currently spamming using a variety of aliases such as Brand 4 Marketing, Ad Media Plus, Site Traffic Network, RCM Delivery, and eBox. |
|
10
|
Jagger Babuin / BHSI – Canada Romanian spammer now living in Vancouver BC. Also known as the “Dr Oz” spammer. |
Source:
- Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database
- Spamhaus Blocklist (SBL) database.
- Spamhaus statistics (original post link – updated regularly)
Detailed records on each spammer or spam gang listed can be viewed by clicking on the names.
I always thought that most of the large spammers are from Africa or Eastern European region (no offense guys – clearly mainline-media portrays it that way). Looking at this list and their location was more of a revelation. Anywho, in case you are lots of emails with links that looks legit (but you think they might contain malwares), then you can use reputed providers online site review tools listed in this page.