Bad news for anyone seeking magic diet pills, a Nigerian prince’s treasure and/or a larger penis:

A California-based Web hosting firm found to be responsible for a sizable number of spam e-mails was taken down last week by its Internet service providers.

The company, McColo Corp., was responsible for spreading e-mails that promoted prescription drugs, counterfeit designer goods and child pornography. The story was reported by the Washington Post, which was responsible for some of the investigation that led to the shutdown.

The Post also reported that security companies that monitor spam levels found a dramatic decrease in spam e-mails the evening McColo was shut down — as much as a 66 percent drop.

This news came less than two months after the ISP Atrivo was forced to close its doors for hosting spam and malicious software. Since then, the ISP has gone active again, dropping some of its bad software affiliates.

How has this affected us here at Iowa State? Kent Ziebell, senior systems analyst for Information Technology Services, said there has been a huge drop in spam e-mails filtered by ITS since this summer, although he said it may be premature to say it is solely a result of these Internet shutdowns.

This summer, ITS was filtering anywhere from 3 million to 4 million spam messages per day. The most recent numbers are in the range of 300,000 to 450,000 per day — a 90 percent drop in spam e-mails.

We rejoice at these numbers, as many of us have long since switched to alternative e-mail clients after being buried in spam e-mails on WebMail.

But the story does not end here — plenty of spammers are still out there, and it remains to be seen what, if anything, the U.S. government will do to hold McColo responsible for its spam involvement. Most spam is just an annoyance, but others, including some sent via McColo, cross that line into sickening and illegal territory. We would like to see McColo held liable for its involvement in spreading child pornography.

There is a chance we will see more actions like the one against McColo taken into the hands of the government. President-elect Obama’s touted chief technology officer position could spearhead operations that go after spammers. Until that position is filled and we have a clearer idea of his or her duties, we can only hope that the government will not refrain from going after spam cases.