According to e-mail security vendor Marshal8e6, total spam volume , as the FTC got a court order to pull the plug on a notorious ISP named Pricewert. "We noticed quite a drop-off mid to late last week," said Phil Hay, a threat analyst with Marshal8e6. "Things got pretty quiet compared to what we'd been seeing."

Pricewert, which also did business under the name 3FN, was knocked off-line after the companies that provided it access to the Internet stopped doing business with it. This happened after the FTC was granted a temporary restraining order Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

According to the FTC, Pricewert was home to a host of illegal activity including the distribution of viruses, phishing, spyware and child pornography. In a , the FTC said Pricewert "actively shielded its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the on-line security community, or shifting its criminal elements to other Internet protocol addresses it controlled to evade detection."

The ISP has said that the alleged criminal activity on its network was the result of bad customers and not its fault.

Pricewert lists its principal place of business as Belize City, Belize, but it operated out of a , the FTC said.