Online marketers offer new antispam initiative

By David Legard, IDG News Service

April 24, 2003 12:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - A consortium of online marketers called the E-mail Service Provider Coalition (ESPC) is planning to set up a registry-based system for transmitting e-mail, which it hopes will eradicate spam by holding senders accountable for the mail they send.
The organization's scheme, called Project Lumos, is intended to revamp the technical architecture through which e-mail is sent. The effort would ease the growing problem of unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, known as spam, which is irritating users and Internet service providers alike, the ESPC said in a statement yesterday.
Under Project Lumos, high-volume mail senders would need to undergo a certification process, and their performance would be monitored by the ESPC to ensure that they maintain best-use practices regarding unsolicited mail.
The Project Lumos blueprint contains the following four elements of accountability:

Certification to ascertain the mailer's identity in order to provide transparency.

Volume mail standards, including standardization of all sender information in the mail header and the use of an identifiable, trackable unsubscribe Web address.

Secure identity, an authentication process that provides secure proof of the sender's identity in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol header.

Performance monitoring, a process that captures, monitors and reports performance data for all senders and mailers.

This approach will preserve legitimate e-mails that consumers have asked to receive, an area where Internet service provider-based antispam filters and blacklists have failed. In the fourth quarter of 2002, 15% of requested commercial e-mail wasn't delivered to consumers because it was wrongly filtered out by service provider systems, the ESPC said.
Since the wider industry has failed to come up with any answers to the growing spam problem, online marketers themselves are attempting to address the issue. The ESPC was formed in November 2002 by the Network Advertising Initiative, a group of 30 online marketers that includes Avenue A Inc., Blue Dolphin Group, Digital Impact Inc., DoubleClick Inc., E-centives Inc. and eLetra Corp.'s iMakeNews unit.
"E-mail is indeed a killer app and has been a major component in the productivity and efficiency gains of the digital economy," the ESPC said. "But those gains will be lost if e-mail becomes unreliable as a communications tool. Businesses will not be able to use e-mail if they cannot have a reasonable assurance that their messages will be delivered."
According to security vendor MessageLabs Ltd., 36.3% of all e-mail received by consumers in March was spam; the ESPC's estimate is 40%. Both organizations say the incidence of spam is rising sharply.

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS

Leading IT Pros Weigh In on Top IT Issues

Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.

WHITE PAPER

For Best Results, Think Beyond the Box

Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!

WHITE PAPER

Accelerating the Path to Demand Intelligence with a Demand Signal Repository

Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Natural User Interface for Enterprise Applications
Learn how a revolutionary user interface can make a complex enterprise application so intuitive even casual users can jump right in....

Why Now is the Right Time for the Linux Desktop
(Source: Novell) Faced with tighter budgets, enterprises are rethinking their desktop strategies to deliver the same - if not better - services and...

Moving Beyond Monolithic - What's Next for Enterprise Application Architectures?
This white paper reviews the current state of enterprise application architecture and presents a prediction on what might come next....

Novell Opens PR Video
Is the Linux desktop for me? Customers are looking for ways to be more flexible and save money. Using Linux offers a great...

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Deployment Approach Guide
This document is intended for IT professionals and managers who are considering deploying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Novell has had a number of...

Usability Is Everything
Learn what sets Workday's HR and Payroll solutions apart from the competition....

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Data Sheet
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the market's only enterprise-quality Linux desktop ready. It delivers seamless interoperability with existing enterprise systems and dozens of...

The Value of Real SaaS at Workday
Cost savings, speed to value, and innovation brought to the enterprise by Workday's software-as-a-service solutions for HR and Payroll....

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Data Sheet
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a highly reliable, interoperable and manageable server operating system built to power mission-critical workloads in physical and virtual...

SaaS at Flextronics, Inc.
Dave Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, discusses the real value of software-as-a-service and why he chose Workday for his HR solution....

All White Papers | All Webcasts