WILMINGTON, Delaware, April 4 /PRNewswire/ --

- MAAWG'S 4th General Meeting to be Held in Dusseldorf, Germany on June 21-23, 2005

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), a group of communications and technology companies, representing more than 500 million subscribers, and committed to solving spam, viruses and other forms of messaging and content abuse, today announced the list of activities that each one of its subcommittees will be pursuing over the next 180 days.

"We've validated that a convergence of Collaboration, Technology, Public Policy and Wireless are the right elements to tackle the messaging abuse problem," said Rich Wong, MAAWG's Chairman and Openwave's General Manager for Messaging. "We have significant work ahead of ourselves, and have the right teams in place to address them."

After a very successful meeting in San Diego, with over 70 companies and 220 attendees from a variety of industries and geographies, the subcommittees defined their activities for the next 180 days:

-- TECHNOLOGY (Led by Tripp Cox -- Earthlink and Rob Fleischman-Openwave) -- The subcommittee is steadfast in accelerating the deployment of Sender Authentication Protocols (SAP). Roadmap of activities includes: -- Engaging standards groups to discuss concerns with existing standards and solutions -- Propose and debate bold technology proposals involving the use of Sender Authentication and Cryptography -- Reviewing existing proposals for publishing of complaint and reputation data and determining if MAAWG can endorse a standard means of sharing data. -- COLLABORATION (Led by Martin Deen -- Cox Communications and Carl Hutzler -- AOL) -- The group has made significant inroads into developing and implementing best current practices (BCP) and Code of Conduct (CoC) documents. -- The collaboration group overwhelmingly approved the general guidelines of the CoC and will be moving into implementation -- In parallel the subcommittee will be further developing and implementing the NOC to NOC reporting procedures/guidelines -- PUBLIC POLICY (Led by Dale Malik -- Bell South and Suzanne Morin -- Bell Canada) -- The group will continue to act as a common industry resource and sounding board focused on the integration of technology initiatives and legislative actions in combating elements of messaging abuse -- The subcommittee will be engaging regulators from other jurisdictions, e.g. EU and Canada, in an effort to broaden the scope and understanding by MAAWG members -- WIRELESS MESSAGING ABUSE (Led by Omar Tellez -- Openwave) -- The group developed and approved a reference architecture and charter -- Next steps include developing best practices around SMTP to SMPP, SMPP to SMPP and collaborating with other organizations via liaison agreements

MAAWG's next general meeting will be held in Dusseldorf, Germany on June 21-23, 2005. For more information about the meeting please go to http://www.maawg.org.

About MAAWG

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) is an independent non-profit coalition of worldwide carriers and technology providers. MAAWG is dedicated to solving messaging abuse by working along three initiatives -- collaboration across operators, best practices technology, and providing an industry voice into public policy.

MAAWG Members include: Sponsors -- America Online -- Bell Canada (Toronto: BC_pa.TO) -- BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) -- Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) -- Cingular Wireless (NYSE: SBC) -- Cloudmark -- Cox Communications (NYSE: COX) -- Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) -- EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK) -- France Telecom -- Goodmail Systems -- Openwave Systems (NASDAQ: OPWV) -- Verizon -- Yahoo! Full Members -- Cablevision -- Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ, NASDAQ: IIJI) -- IronPort -- MX Logic -- Sprint -- Symantec -- Verisign Inc. Supporters -- Bizanga LTD -- Checkfree Corporation -- Cincinnati Bell -- Fortinet Inc. -- Habeas Inc. -- Kelkea, Inc. -- NetVision LLC -- Nextel Communications -- Omniti Computer Consulting, Inc. -- Return Path, Inc. -- Sendmail -- Singlefin -- Skylist, Inc. -- TDC -- TDS Telecom, TDS Metrocom -- Word To The Wise For further information, contact: Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group 572B Ruger Street P.O. Box 29920 San Francisco, California 94129-0920 Telephone: +1-415-561-6277 Executive Director, Jerry Upton jerry.upton@maawg.org BellSouth Brent Fowler +1-404-829-8722 brent.fowler@bellsouth.com Openwave Systems Nicole Arena +1-650-346-4293 nicole.arena@openwave.com Comcast Jeanne Russo +1-215-981-8552 jeanne_russo@comcast.com EarthLink Alexandra Trask +1-404-748-7267 direct traska@corp.earthlink.net America Online Nicholas Graham +1-703-265-1801 Sprint Charles M. Fleckenstein +1-913-794-2943

Jerry Upton, Executive Director of Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, +1-415-561-6277, jerry.upton@maawg.org; or Brent Fowler of BellSouth, +1-404-829-8722, brent.fowler@bellsouth.com; or Nicole Arena of Openwave Systems, +1-650-346-4293, nicole.arena@openwave.com; or Jeanne Russo of Comcast, +1-215-981-8552, jeanne_russo@comcast.com; or Alexandra Trask of EarthLink, +1-404-748-7267, traska@corp.earthlink.net; or Nicholas Graham of America Online, +1-703-265-1801; or Charles M. Fleckenstein of Sprint, +1-913-794-2943