Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL push anti-spam plans

The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA), whose members include Yahoo, Microsoft, EarthLink and AOL, yesterday issued technical recommendations and a guide to best practice to help ISPs and businesses counteract spam.

The recommendations focus on solving the problem of email forgery by eliminating domain spoofing to help prevent ISPs and their customers from being sources of spam.

To combat the threat of email address forgery, ASTA recommends authenticating senders based on IP addresses, and content signing via public/private key pairs.

Other recommendations include tighter control on mailboxes and email providers, and a crackdown on email address harvesting.

Users should also be advised in the implementation of security tools such as firewalls and antivirus software.

"We are laying out clear best practices and 'good neighbour' policies that will help change the rules of the game on spammers once and for all," said Brad Garlinghouse, vice president of communication products at Yahoo, in a statement.

Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the anti-spam technology and strategy team at Microsoft, added: "Our aim with this proposal is to help lay out a clear framework for the industry as we continue to work together to end the spam business and put our customers back in control of their inboxes."

A PDF of the ASTA proposals can be downloaded here.

See also:

Microsoft and ISPs launch spam legal offensive

Software giant joins AOL, EarthLink and Yahoo!  29 Oct 2004

Spammers face tri-nation crackdown

UK, US and Australia join forces to investigate and prosecute spammers  02 Jul 2004

Sevenfold increase in phishing attacks

Spoofed email scams up 700 per cent in just five months  29 Jun 2004

Common anti-spam standard ready soon

Industry likely to agree on IP-based sender authentication scheme  25 Jun 2004

PCs take nine sick days a year

Too much spam in the diet, reports Yahoo Mail  24 Jun 2004

Spammers use spyware to improve hit rates

Latest technique deploys malware to gather information from PCs  23 Jun 2004

MasterCard to combat phishing and ID theft

Credit card giant uses NameProtect technology to detect online scams in real time  22 Jun 2004

ITU talks aim to kill off 'spam plague'

World's telco giants discuss plans to combat unsolicited email  13 Jun 2004

Spammers consider UK a soft touch

'Derisory sanctions' of European e-privacy law has made spam problem worse, warn experts  11 Jun 2004

Junk mail

The term 'spam' may have been popularised by a Monty Python sketch but, in the electronic world, junk mail is far from a laughing matter.  06 Jun 2003

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