MAAWG may sound like another boring technology acronym or a character out of a 70’s B film, but the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group—which held its conference last week in Washington, D.C.—is an important organization that brings together leaders from all aspects of the email messaging world. The conference featured individuals like Mike Jones (head of AOL’s anti-abuse department), representing Internet Service Providers (ISPs); email service providers (ESPs) like mobileStorm; and marketers such as Travelocity. The MAAWG conference was not just a chance to travel on the company dime; it let people collaborate and address major messaging topics such as SPAM, email virus attacks, and other forms of email abuse.
The MAAWG conference focused on several key items—the most important dealing with reputation and email delivery. What’s new is that ISPs are moving from content-based blocks and moving towards blocks based on “sender reputation.” Across the board, ISPs are adopting this idea of sender reputation in some form or another. Senders with bad reputations may not get through to the inboxprotecting end users.

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