FIGHTING AGAINST SPAM
In response to the increasing public outcry against spam, ISPs and software companies are introducing a variety of new tools designed to give greater control to their users and stem the flow of unsolicited email into inboxes. Below detail what some of the leaders in the email receiver industry are implementing.
Introduced in August (new members will receive 9.0 automatically as of October 15) of this year, AOL 9.0 blocks automatic display of images in HTML email coming from any address that the recipient does not have in their address book. The "Report Spam" button remains and also powers AOL's new adaptive filters, which learn the types of email the recipient marks as spam in hopes of reducing such emails in the future. Also introduced are user configurable filters, allowing users to filter out words or domains they do not want.
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The recently released upgrade to Microsoft's Office suite included a bevy of upgrades to Outlook's spam prevention technology. As with AOL 9, Outlook 2003 will no longer automatically display images in HTML email and the new Junk Mail filter, which will be enabled by default, will also feature adaptive filtering technology. Outlook 2003 gives more control to the user by allowing an easy way to set up personal whitelists and blocklists. MSN 8.5 and Hotmail.com will be upgraded with scaled down variations of these features.
Embracing a popular method of spam control their systems were already being used for, Yahoo will allow users to create up to 5 "throw-away" addresses to use when signing up to websites that are not entirely trusted. These email addresses will act as aliases for the users' real email address and can be disabled if they become compromised by spam.
Earthlink offers a relatively new method of spam control, the challenge-response system. In case you missed my original article, the Earthlink challenge-response system will reject any email sent to the user from an unknown source until the sender responds to a challenge email.
As the adoption of these new services increases, open rates will see the biggest decline. Current open rates are affected by users simply scrolling through the inbox and thumbing through emails in the preview pane. When these content blocking filters become common, the open numbers, while lower, will reflect a more accurate measure of users actually opening and reading your message.
The shift towards greater user control will require a greater emphasis on managing user expectations about your mailings as well as education on your privacy policy. Make sure that users signing up for your mailings know and expect the type of content that will be mailed to them and understand your privacy and subscription policies. With many of these tools validating the user's address book, make sure you provide instructions for new list members to add you into their known contacts lists and whitelists.