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Picking an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is no easy task. When considering an ISP make sure to investigate that its spam policies are clearly defined.
Here's a list of five tactics an ISP should use to help fight
spam:
1. Educate users
ISPs need to educate their users about spam -- what spam is and what it's not. Users should know what steps they can take to avoid getting spammed and what they should do once they have received spam email.
2. Police networks
ISPs need to aggressively act against outbound spamming -- that is, spammers who are their own customers or who are using their mail systems. They need to monitor their own networks continuously and cooperate with other ISPs' abuse desks when they do detect spammers at work.
3. Pursue legal action
ISPs should go after spammers where it hurts them the most -- in their pocketbooks. They should take legal action against those spammers who are breaking the law.
4. Prevent harvesting
Harvesting is when spammers try to cleverly send email to many unknown addresses at an ISP. Users' email addresses are discovered through trial and error by keeping track of the messages that get delivered and the ones that don't. ISPs should have tools in place to prevent this -- they must not let spammers discover their clients' email addresses.
5. Filter spam at the server
Solutions like Brightmail prevent spam from ever getting delivered to a user's mailbox. Brightmail tracks real-time spam attacks occurring on the Internet at any given time and constantly sends out new rules to block these attacks. Spam never makes it past Brightmail's MailWall -- it gets deleted or sent to the user's spam folder.
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