At last, someone in Israel is taking the fight against spam seriously. The CEOs of Israel's five leading internet service providers (ISP), Internet Gold Lines (Nasdaq:IGLD), Bezeq International, 013 Barak, Netvision, and 012 Golden Lines, met in a special forum yesterday set up at the initiative of Microsoft Israel, with the aim of joining forces against the plague of electronic junk mail that fills inboxes with ads for drugs to enhance sexual performance and low-rate loans, and threatens to kill off e-mail as an effective means of instant communication. The members of the forum have joined forces to deal with the issues of security, spam, and protecting customers' privacy.
Participants at the meeting yesterday evening included Internet Gold CEO Eli Holtzman, Bezeq International CEO Avi Gabai, Netvision president and CEO Ravit Barniv, Golden Lines CEO Stella Handler, Barak deputy CEO Nati Perry, and Microsoft Israel founder and managing director Arie Scope. The forum's discussion was about defining aims, and setting targets and drawing up an action list for the coming quarter. Most of the participants preferred not to talk about its deliberations in detail.
This is the first time there has been cooperation among ISPs. A spokesperson for Microsoft Israel said that, among other things, the forum would try to raise awareness among Internet users of existing solutions, and would search for technological and legal means for dealing with the problems that exist and for setting standards for efficient, secure communications. According to Scope, the spam from which the ISPs suffer creates a huge load on their networks, amounting to about 60% of their resources.
Scope said that the companies would cooperate in bringing legal action against spammers, and would publish a newsletter and involve themselves in education in schools. "I was pleasantly surprised by the readiness of the ISPs to cooperate," he said, "Everyone I approached came to the meeting.
"The move is part of a strategy Microsoft declared several years ago, of improving security and building more secure products."
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on July 29, 2004