(By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com) Two weeks since web hosting provider McColo - the alleged host to some of the most heinous criminals on the Internet - went offline, analytics firms across the web have found that global volume of spam has dropped by up to 75 percent and is staying low.

After staking out McColo (www.mccolo.com) for the past four months, the Washington Post's Security Fix blog found that the San Jose host was likely hosting "some of the most disreputable cyber-criminal gangs in business today," including child pornography, anti-virus scams and malicious software, which has stolen banking and credit card information from more than half a million people. Security Fix blogger Brian Krebs informed two of its upstream Internet providers, which subsequently ceased their service to McColo.

Since effectively blowing the whistle on McColo, Krebs has found spam levels have been remaining low. Citing email security firm IronPort's (www.ironport.com) reports that it blocked around 35 billion junk emails Monday, down from weeks ago when it would have typically flagged roughly 160 billion messages daily. He also noted that Spamcop.net's reports show spam volumes "well below half" the levels reported before McColo was taken down.