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RSS feedsAn influential government think-tank has targeted ISPs in the battle against spam. The All Party Internet Group (Apig) is proposing that ISPs agree a code of practice and make emails more traceable to reduce the growing menace of junk emails.
Apig said that email addresses should include a reference to the location of the sender, such as a postal code, or similar identifier, as well as a country-code suffix at the end of each domain name.
"ISPs should not end addresses with just a .com suffix but should use the sender's specific domain such as .co.uk or .co.fr," said Derek Wyatt MP, chairman of Apig.
Wyatt warned that the government could pass laws to make ISPs take action. "At the moment the ISPs are sitting on the fence, but politicians have the power to force them to get together and draw up a code of practice for dealing with spam," he said.
The tough new stance came as Wyatt returned from the US, where Apig was lobbying the Federal Trade Commission to follow the EU's lead and require consumers to give their consent before firms can send them marketing in emails. Currently, in most US states, consumers have to opt out.
Recent research suggests that more than half of emails are now spam. This is a costly problem for firms - in a survey almost half of US workers said they would be more productive if they received less spam. Staff also said employers had a duty to protect them from unsolicited pornographic email.
"The emerging problem we've found is that unsolicited email creates real liability for businesses," said Matthew Prince, chief executive of anti-spam specialist Unspam.
See also:
Tools, strategies and legal efforts for eradicating unsolicited email - plus advice on how to ensure legitimate email marketing remains both legal and welcome 27 Feb 2004
All Public Sector IT
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