Anti-Spam Group MAAWG Sees 5 Years of Significant Growth, 2009 Officers Elected, DSN Status Paper Released

SAN FRANCISCO - The largest global trade association working against spam and messaging abuse continued its fifth consecutive year of significant growth, despite the economic downturn. The work produced by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and the success of its three meetings that attracted a record number of attendees in 2008 reflect the messaging industry’s urgency in addressing the fundamental issues underlying spam and in protecting consumers.

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MAAWG grew 27% and more than doubled its international membership in 2008, ending the year with 161 members, including the industry’s largest ISPs and email providers, volume senders and vendors. Expanding its focus from simply preventing spam to a broader awareness of protecting consumers, MAAWG continued to publish expert papers in 2008 to help the industry better understand and implement email authentication, reputation assessment, updated senders best practices, email forwarding, and practices for sharing dynamic IP addresses.

“The hackers and criminals responsible for botnets and messaging abuse today have become an underground global economy based on illicit activities that prey on end-users. No single ISP or vendor can stop spam. It requires international cooperation and in MAAWG we come together across borders to address the technical and public policy issues that can stop messaging abuse and protect consumers,” said MAAWG Chairman Michael O’Reirdan.

2009 Elected Officers and Published Papers

Elected to a second term, O’Reirdan is continuing to serve as MAAWG chairman in 2009. Other elected officers are MAAWG Co-Vice Chairs Alexander Bobotek and Chris Roosenraad. Anthony Purcell was elected treasurer.

A new paper published by MAAWG in April also was announced. A discussion on improving non-deliverability status notices to better identify abuse issues, the paper is the first step in bringing awareness of this issue to the industry. “Configuring Human Readable Delivery Status Notifications (DSN),” is available on the MAAWG Web site (www.MAAWG.org).

Other work in process also includes:

- Best practices to safely remove malware from unsuspecting users’ computers - Understanding messaging abuse over IPv6 - Migrating to IPv6 and upgrading a messaging infrastructure - Web messaging security and other outbound abuse - The relationship between messaging abuse, DNS abuse and port 53 management - Registrars best practices

The MAAWG 16th General Meeting, June 9-11 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, will feature a keynote on current European Union legislative efforts to criminalize botnets by Radomir Jansky, European Commission Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security. The meeting will also offer over 20 sessions featuring speakers and panels on mobile spam reporting formats, botnet mitigation practices, and feedback loops to help providers estimate costs, among other topics.

About the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG)

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) is where the messaging industry comes together to work against spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and other online exploitation. MAAWG (www.MAAWG.org) represents almost one billion mailboxes from some of the largest network operators worldwide. It is the only organization addressing messaging abuse holistically by systematically engaging all aspects of the problem, including technology, industry collaboration and public policy. MAAWG leverages the depth and experience of its global membership to tackle abuse on existing networks and new emerging services. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., MAAWG is an open forum driven by market needs and supported by major network operators and messaging providers.

MAAWG Board of Directors: AOL; AT&T (NYSE: T); Charter Communications (Nasdaq: CHTR); Cloudmark, Inc.; Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA); Cox Communications; France Telecom (NYSE and Euronext: FTE); Goodmail Systems; Openwave Systems (Nasdaq: OPWV); Time Warner Cable; Verizon Communications; and Yahoo! Inc.

MAAWG Full Members: 1&1 Internet AG; Bizanga LTD; Constant Contact; e-Dialog; Eloqua Corporation; Experian CheetahMail; Internet Initiative Japan, (IIJ Nasdaq: IIJI); IronPort Systems; McAfee Inc.; MX Logic; Outblaze LTD; Return Path, Inc.; Spamhaus; Sprint; and Symantec.

A complete member list is available at www.maawg.org/about/roster.

Source: Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG)

Linda Marcus, APR, +1-714-974-6356, lmarcus at astra.cc, Astra Communications; Logo: https://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070124/CLW180LOGO