Consumers who doubt their own ability to avoid ID theft from bad e-mail will not get much solace from Blue Security’s survey results on how hackers are mining e-mail addresses and passwords, Jack Germain reported for E-commerce Times.

Spam-fighting strategies used by ISPs and consumers might be turning the tide against unwanted e-mail. However, innovative phishing scams continue to target both corporate users and consumers. The two newest phishing attack scenarios involve registration attacks and password reminder attacks.

Users of file-sharing networks are particularly vulnerable to attacks, a new industry analysis warns.

The industry is readying plans to give consumers the confidence they need in avoiding phishing, by working on standards for an e-mail authentication system. However, public awareness and education about basic of safe email practice, detecting fraudulent phishing e-mail and avoiding spyware is required especially for financial account holder.

Full story at E-commerce Times.

More than 50 big organizations’ permission email is being filtered as junk by Yahoo, Hotmail and/or Gmail, Pivotal Veracity reported on its study released exclusively to Marketing Sherpa a few days ago.

The six-week study involves 100 companies, of which 54 of them can’t get their permission email messages past filters, and 18% of filtered messages were welcome messages to new opt-ins.

Pivotal Veracitiy also found that TRUSTe seals may help the public feel safer doing business with you online but filters don’t track which mailers have TRUSTe seals.

Double opt-in mailers were 20 points more likely to avoid filters than single opt-in mailers (39% as opposed to 59% rate), which signals that double opt-in is becoming not only best practice to avoid spam complaints, but to increase deliverability.

The fact is every mailer might show different numbers. To find out what is the correct delivery rate, you have to use the delivery tracking service, which cost extra.

For a limited time, the article is available at Marketing Sherpa, including the full 33-page report from Pivotal Veracity in PDF format.

A Canadian task force has submited its draft to country’s Minister of Industry about recommendation to combat spam, Enid Burns reported for ClickZ News.

The task force was assembled by the Canadian government, which set up the May 2004 Anti-Spam Actio Plan for Canada to evaluate existing legislation and make recommendations for revisions and new laws to reduce spam.

The report calls for additional government legislation to advance prohibition of spamming activities and establish appropriate penalties, enforcement mechanisms, and industry standards to fight spam. It also recommends practices on business conduct, public education and awareness, and international cooperation with regard to spam.

The task force advises the government to continue to pursue bilateral agreements on anti-spam policies and strategies with foreign governments. In addition, it calls for seamless international cooperative investigation and investigative action.

Full story at ClickZ News.