SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 /PRNewswire/ --

The largest global trade association working against spam and messaging
abuse continued its fifth consecutive year of significant growth, despite the
economic downturn. The work produced by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working
Group (MAAWG) and the success of its three meetings that attracted a record
number of attendees in 2008 reflect the messaging industry's urgency in
addressing the fundamental issues underlying spam and in protecting
consumers.

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MAAWG grew 27% and more than doubled its international membership in
2008, ending the year with 161 members, including the industry's largest ISPs
and email providers, volume senders and vendors. Expanding its focus from
simply preventing spam to a broader awareness of protecting consumers, MAAWG
continued to publish expert papers in 2008 to help the industry better
understand and implement email authentication, reputation assessment, updated
senders best practices, email forwarding, and practices for sharing dynamic
IP addresses.

"The hackers and criminals responsible for botnets and messaging abuse
today have become an underground global economy based on illicit activities
that prey on end-users. No single ISP or vendor can stop spam. It requires
international cooperation and in MAAWG we come together across borders to
address the technical and public policy issues that can stop messaging abuse
and protect consumers," said MAAWG Chairman Michael O'Reirdan.

2009 Elected Officers and Published Papers

Elected to a second term, O'Reirdan is continuing to serve as MAAWG
chairman in 2009. Other elected officers are MAAWG Co-Vice Chairs Alexander
Bobotek and Chris Roosenraad. Anthony Purcell was elected treasurer.

A new paper published by MAAWG in April also was announced. A discussion
on improving non-deliverability status notices to better identify abuse
issues, the paper is the first step in bringing awareness of this issue to
the industry. "Configuring Human Readable Delivery Status Notifications
(DSN)," is available on the MAAWG Web site (www.MAAWG.org).

Other work in process also includes:

- Best practices to safely remove malware from unsuspecting users'
      computers
    - Understanding messaging abuse over IPv6
    - Migrating to IPv6 and upgrading a messaging infrastructure
    - Web messaging security and other outbound abuse
    - The relationship between messaging abuse, DNS abuse and port 53
      management
    - Registrars best practices

The MAAWG 16th General Meeting, June 9-11 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
will feature a keynote on current European Union legislative efforts to
criminalize botnets by Radomir Jansky, European Commission
Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security. The meeting will also
offer over 20 sessions featuring speakers and panels on mobile spam reporting
formats, botnet mitigation practices, and feedback loops to help providers
estimate costs, among other topics.

About the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG)

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) is where the messaging
industry comes together to work against spam, viruses, denial-of-service
attacks and other online exploitation. MAAWG (www.MAAWG.org) represents
almost one billion mailboxes from some of the largest network operators
worldwide. It is the only organization addressing messaging abuse
holistically by systematically engaging all aspects of the problem, including
technology, industry collaboration and public policy. MAAWG leverages the
depth and experience of its global membership to tackle abuse on existing
networks and new emerging services. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif.,
MAAWG is an open forum driven by market needs and supported by major network
operators and messaging providers.

MAAWG Board of Directors: AOL; AT&T (NYSE: T); Charter Communications
(Nasdaq: CHTR); Cloudmark, Inc.; Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA); Cox Communications;
France Telecom (NYSE and Euronext: FTE); Goodmail Systems; Openwave Systems
(Nasdaq: OPWV); Time Warner Cable; Verizon Communications; and Yahoo! Inc.

MAAWG Full Members: 1&1 Internet AG; Bizanga LTD; Constant Contact;
e-Dialog; Eloqua Corporation; Experian CheetahMail; Internet Initiative
Japan, (IIJ Nasdaq: IIJI); IronPort Systems; McAfee Inc.; MX Logic; Outblaze
LTD; Return Path, Inc.; Spamhaus; Sprint; and Symantec.

A complete member list is available at http://www.maawg.org/about/roster.