A growing number of web hosting services in China have begun offering anyone willing to pay roughly $700 the ability to send an unlimited amount of spam. It’s called “bulletproof hosting” and it was originally meant to allow users more freedom in the types of files they could upload, but these days it is used mostly by spammers, porn sites and online gambling services.

China’s government has begun cracking down on porn sites and online gambling services located within the country, so these hosts have begun offering their services internationally, and they aren’t beating around the bush. Here’s an excerpt from one host’s website:

          “Your web hosting provider will shut down your web site within days or even sooner, if they find out you are sending bulk emails and directing people to your site on their server. Bullet-Proof Web Hosting helps you to direct customers to your web site, and you won’t have to worry about being shut down because of spam complaints.”

They’ve even begun hosting domain names-in fact more than 22,000 spam sending domains were all traced back to six bulletproof computers in China, and since these domains are behind bulletproof hosting, the take down requests are simply ignored. The Waledec Trojan calls some of these protected domains home.

There is little that can be done about the problem until China decides to go after them under its tough new cybercrime laws, but it could be a very very long time before that happens.