30/06/2008

New advice has been issued to help internet service providers (ISPs) in their battle with spam.

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group has compiled the best practices which include recommendations to use separate servers for received and forwarded emails.

Other practices that were advised included posting policies on the web and recognising internet protocol space that has been designated for forwarding.

As well as tackling spam, which has been estimated to account for over 90 per cent of all email content, the guidelines should protect consumers from being 'unnecessarily or unintentionally' blocked.

Over 230 abuse and privacy professionals from ISPs, email providers and vendors from 18 companies attended a meeting to finalise the new papers.

Richard Cox, from UK anti-spam group Spamhaus, told the BBC: 'These are very significant recommendations and they are coming from a well-respected body so there is not much excuse for not following them.'