NAI Links With IronPort's Bonded Sender Program

The Network Advertising Initiative’s (NAI) E-mail Service Provider Coalition (ESPC) said it will use IronPort Systems’ bonded sender program to implement Project Lumos, the spam-fighting effort unveiled earlier this year.

IronPort’s bulk sender whitelist service will provide a back end over which legitimate email senders can flag themselves as such. The IronPort platform is designed to strip bulk mailers’ anonymity. High volume email senders are required to establish bonded accounts of a minimum $50,000 to ensure they will not spam.

Trevor Hughes, NAI executive director, said IronPort’s program, “stands out as a solid platform for ensuring that legitimate email senders can identify themselves and recipients can be assured that they are not being spoofed.”

TRUSTe, the Internet privacy organization, manages complaints and fines offenders against the posted bonds. Repeat offenders are expelled from the Bonded Sender whitelist.

“ISPs have told us they want the ability to distinguish the good from the bad,” Hughes told this publication. “They don’t necessarily want to flag us to create false positives.”

He said the organization has been in talks with top ISPs about joining the program. The incentive would be improved customer service by reducing the number of email false positives, legitimate messages wrongly flagged as spam and blocked before they reach subscribers’ inboxes.

The NAI says email sent by its members accounts for approximately 25 percent of legitimate commercial email. IronPort claims its bonded account program reaches approximately 60 million inboxes on over 12,000 ISPs. A new version of the program was released earlier this month.

As part of their email processes under the Project Lumos program, ISPs would rank registered senders on a point system and reserve the right to block any email sent by low-scoring companies.

Project Lumos, announced earlier this year, opposes anti-spam legislation. Instead, its two-pronged anti-spam approach is technology coupled with sender transparency.