Underscoring growing concern over spam, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has created a new Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) that aims to put unsolicited commercial e-mail in its crosshairs by setting standards for spam detection and potential legislation. . . .
Underscoring growing concern over spam, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has created a new Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) that aims to put unsolicited commercial e-mail in its crosshairs by setting standards for spam detection and potential legislation.

"We decided to go ahead now because it's clear that spam has become a serious problem for organizations," ASRG Chair Paul Judge said Friday.

Judge, who is also the director of research and development at e-mail security firm CipherTrust Inc., added that while there are a patchwork of spam-fighting tools already available, the industry has yet to take a systematic approach to the problem.

The anti-spam group will work within the organization' s Internet Research Task Force and will investigate whether a single architecture can be implemented that will allow e-mail receivers to express their consent and, more importantly, lack of consent for certain communications. This approach is due to the fact that everyone's definition of spam is different, the group said, making e-mail a consent-based communication.

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