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Quote:"It has become more of a challenge to send e-mail," Sal Tripi, the director of operations at Port Washington, N.Y.-based Publishers Clearing House, said in an interview. "Because the ISPs are taking certain actions to catch illegitimate mailers, legitimate mailers have to take action to make sure that they are not caught in the same net."

In reputation-based filtering, senders are graded on their practices and assigned a reputation score based on several variables, such as complaint rates, volume of mail sent and response to unsubscribe requests. It's one of the latest techniques used to combat the problem of spam, which makes up more than 80 percent of all messages sent today, according to e-mail security service Postini.

Also in response to spam, e-mail service providers are aggressively filtering messages to keep the medium useful for their customers. That, allied to the reputation push, is putting a burden on companies to meet the requirements of those providers. If they don't, they risk a slur on their character--and a subsequent ding to their business...