Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin's Center for Research in Economic Commerce recently launched SpamRankings, a Web site that identifies the names and addresses of organizations that are helping send out spam. The site will publicize spam havens--organizations that have been taken over by spammers. The site's creators are hoping the publicity will pressure organizations to improve their security and spam-prevention efforts.

The researchers' initial focus will be on health-care providers that have been infected by spam bots, with future versions of the project including banking and Web hosting providers. Last month SpamRankings identified Belgium's WIN Authonomous Systems as the biggest spam sender in the world. "Nobody wants to do business with a bank or hospital or Internet hosting company that has been hijacked by spammers," says center director Andrew Whinston. The researchers worked with Team Cyrmu, which tracks cybercrime activity to analyze and correlate Internet protocol addresses with organizations.