FTC to liquidate assets of rogue Internet service provider 3FN

The Federal Trade Commission permanently shut down the U.S. operations of a rogue Internet service provider that hosted child pornography, spam-spitting programs, spyware and other malicious contents.

The FTC first used a court order against San Jose, Calif.-based 3FN almost a year ago, stopping its operations. The amount of spam traffic across the Internet subsequently dropped almost 15 percent by some measurements. At the time, the agency said 3FN's owner, Pricewert LLC, and other companies it owned including APS Telecom, recruited and collaborated with criminals and bragged about its services in an online forum.