Anti Spam Organization BestPrac.Org Re-Launched

The globally focused anti spam organization BestPrac.Org relaunched this month after overcoming a funding crisis. BestPrac.Org Chairman, Mr. Trevor Johnson, stated today that BestPrac.Orgs four year history of devising and promoting Principles of Best Practice for Spam Prevention resumes immediately.

Sydney, Australia May 11, 2004 -- The globally focused anti spam organization BestPrac.Org relaunched this month after overcoming a funding crisis. BestPrac.Org Chairman, Mr. Trevor Johnson, stated today that BestPrac.Orgs four year history of devising and promoting Principles of Best Practice for Spam Prevention resumes immediately after the brief absence caused by funding problems.

BestPrac.Orgs website, http://www.bestprac.org provides twenty different sets of Principles of Best Practice to cover a wide range of different types of Internet industry participants. These Principles specify ethical and technological standards each sector of the internet industry needs to adopt to combat the rising tide of email spam internationally. The relaunch of BestPrac.Org has seen an overhaul and update of the Principles of Best Practice that recognise changes in spammer behaviour, improvements in technology, and the rise of legislation.

Mr. Johnson said that many of the Principles originated by BestPrac.Org have been adopted by several major ISPs, software developers, and other internet industry participants. He cited examples such as technologies preventing automated account sign-ups with free service providers, and email software and services that have introduced web-bug blocking.

There is still much work to be done in making these Principles known and put into practice worldwide. Too much responsibility has been placed by the internet community on end-user spam filters. We believe a greater emphasis needs to be placed on source-server prevention via the use of rate-limiter technologies, for example. That way, spam can be prevented at source, before bandwidth and associated costs which are effectively paid for by the recipients, not the spammers, are consumed Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson furthermore said that recent legislative measures in the USA, Europe and Australia have proven largely counter-productive. The US CAN-SPAM Act, in particular, tends to legitimise spam. The fact that, after more than three months of operation, tens of millions of spam emails are still being sent from US based ISPs every hour, most of it not even complying with the most basic requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act, shows that it is not working.

The volume of spam continues to grow. There is a lack of legal recourse by private citizens against spammers. Only four (4) people have been charged thus far by the FTC for CAN-SPAM violations. These facts show that the current law alone is grossly inadequate to meet the challenge of bringing an end to the international scourge of spam. While workable and enforceable laws are welcome, the real answer lies in widespread compliance with BestPrac.Orgs comprehensive sets of Principles of Best Practice for Email Spam Prevention and Eradication Mr Johnson said.

It is understood that a further project currently being undertaken by BestPrac.Org is a research and analysis assignment to quantify and specify the ISPs and hosting services most used by spammers. With such facts on the table, honest internet users, individuals and corporations, will be in a better position to boycott the recalcitrant service providers. BestPrac.Org will also use the findings to lobby such service providers to comply with the Principles of Best Practice.

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