ISPs Form Antispam Army

Wireline and wireless companies have joined forces to form an ISP Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group and to develop methods to shut down spammers before they appear on the networks.

The founding members include Bell Canada, BellSouth, Cox Communications, Internet Initiative Japan, NII Holdings, and Openwave Systems, among others.

Banding Against Spam

"The fire is raging in the wireline world as you look at your in-box. In the degree that we can preempt the fire in the wireless world, we will do that," says Rich Wong, general manager at Openwave, a wireless infrastructure provider.

The group plans to build a "neighborhood watch" that will gather information about spammers, create a standard architecture and technology to stop spam before it filters into the networks of ISPs, wireless carriers, or cable modem providers, and attempt to influence public policy.

"We want to move from filtering only to stopping spam at the network edge," Wong adds.

Beyond the Law

While monitoring and influencing legislation is important, Wong says recent legislation does nothing to reduce the amount of spam e-mails that users receive. Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act in December, but Wong calls it the "canned spam" act and notes that the industry must tackle spam itself.

The group will also develop an ISP code of conduct, and a trusted inter-carrier network for messaging. It is also developing resources involving best practices to prevent spam, denial-of-service attacks, virus and any other undesired content.

"Spammers are united; we need to do the same thing," says Nick Jacobs, director of data services at NII Holdings.