ISPA Publishes New Recommendations To Combat Spam
Email attribution, customer information and email abuse management guidance
Tuesday, 3rd April 2007
The Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA UK) – the UK’s leading Internet trade association – has published new recommendations for ISPs regarding unsolicited bulk email (UBE), colloquially referred to as spam.
The new recommendations are the latest in a series of best current practice (BCP) documents advising ISPA members on various issues. Each BCP represents what ISPA considers to be best practice at the time of publishing.
ISPA believes that in order to combat spam effectively action is required from the Internet industry, the Government, law enforcement agencies and importantly end-users. The self-regulatory measures set out in the UBE BCP should be backed-up by effective laws enabling action to be taken against persistent spammers.
The document is available online at http://www.ispa.org.uk/home/page_364.html
ISPA advises consumers to protect their PCs with firewalls. This prevents them from being turned into zombie PCs by spammers, creating an open relay which allows the computer to be hijacked and used to mail spam and send out viruses. A recent study shows spammers use zombie PCs to distribute over 80 percent of spam on the ‘net.
Jessica Hendrie-Liaño, Chair of ISPA Council explains, “UBE is a problem for ISPs but they are taking steps to tackle it. ISPs are reducing UBE by ensuring that their email systems will not relay email for unauthorised third parties and that all email generated within their network can be traced back to its source. However, customers can also play a very important role by securing their PCs and reporting cases of UBE. Effective abuse procedures should be in place to make reporting easier. Customers need to be educated on the nature of UBE, how to protect their PCs with firewalls and anti-virus software, and should also be informed of other services provided by their ISPs to help keep UBE to a minimum.”
UBE is usually commercial in nature, often containing sales promotions, "get rich quick" schemes and product information. It can be irritating, criminally fraudulent, sometimes obscene or offensive and is very time consuming for recipients to download and work through.
Mrs Hendrie-Liaño said, “ISPs hate spam. It saps valuable bandwidth, can compromise the integrity of a network and affects the performance of mail servers. Combating spam costs ISPs and their customers very significant amounts of time and money.”
Future BCP documents will be published advising ISPA members on how to approach common industry issues such as copyright infringement, peer-to-peer file sharing and contact with law enforcement agencies.
- ends -
Notes to editors:
The views expressed in this release are those of the Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA UK) and do not necessarily reflect the corporate policies of the individual companies that are members of the Association or other organisations that may be mentioned in the release.
For further editorial information please contact the ISPA Press Office (020 7340 4535)
About the Internet Services Providers’ Association:
The Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA UK) was established in 1995 as a trade association to represent providers of Internet services in the UK. ISPA promotes competition, self-regulation and the development of the Internet industry. For a list of members or other information about ISPA, please consult the website: www.ispa.org.uk