AntiSpam Laws Getting Tougher

Second, the antispam technology market has begun to consolidate. Symantec made the first move with its acquisition of Brightmail, but there are more than 120 vendors in the overcrowded antispam market, so look for more mergers and acquisitions over the next year.

Finally, antispam standards have made a major leap forward. Two related specifications--Microsoft's Caller ID for E-Mail and Pobox.com's Sender Policy Framework (SPF)--have been merged and submitted to the IETF. With this combined spec, antispam systems can verify a message's origin (a particular mail domain) at both the transport and data layers and detect e-mail that spoofs its origin, which accounts for much of the current spam problem.