FTC Study On Email Filtering Techniques And Address Masking

Trickery and technology both play key roles in managing spam, according to a study released yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission. The agency looked at three aspects of spamming and efforts to control it: the automated harvesting of E-mail addresses on public areas of the Internet; using E-mail address masking to reduce address harvesting; and the effectiveness of spam filtering by Internet Service Providers.

To conduct its five-week study, the FTC established 50 test E-mail accounts at each of three separate ISPs; two used spam filters and one didn't. It also posted 50 E-mail addresses on various Web sites, chat rooms, message boards, USENET groups, and blogs.

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