Demonstrating their commitment to work with the international online industry to protect consumers, Facebook and Tata Communications, a leading global telecom service provider that is part of India's Tata Group, have joined the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group at the organization's highest membership level and will serve on the MAAWG Board of Directors. MAAWG is the largest global organization targeting spam and other messaging exploits, and the new members will augment its presence both among social networking platforms and in emerging countries.
MAAWG has grown into an industry conduit for bringing together messaging experts working to curb spam and online abuse from around the world, from all aspects of the industry, and on all types of devices. Facebook has developers in over 180 countries and over 500 million users, including 150 million users actively accessing their accounts through mobile devices. The social media site will play an active role in MAAWG work, interfacing with other members to develop industry practices to safeguard end-users.
Tata Communications is a global telecom service provider based in India, part of the $70.8 billion Tata Group, and it delivers managed solutions to global enterprises, service providers and Indian consumers. Along with its pan-continent network, it has a leadership position in emerging markets and will share its broad perspective as MAAWG develops best practices and in the organization's public policies discussions.
"Both Facebook and Tata Communications will be engaging with other important social media platforms, global ISPs and the diversified constituents within the industry, to not only make sure the online world is open and connected, but to also ensure it remains as safe as possible for consumers," said Michael O'Reirdan, MAAWG Chairman.
Joe Sullivan, Facebook's Chief Security Officer added, "Our deep commitment to site security requires the development of robust technologies and active engagement with organizations like MAAWG. We look forward to collaborating with the entire working group to aggressively fight messaging abuse."
The MAAWG 20th General Meeting in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 4-6 will be an important venue for furthering this work. Attended by messaging and security specialists, public policy representatives and academic experts, it will feature professional training sessions open to the industry and multi-track presentations on global legislation, technology and policies to combat messaging abuse. The focus will be on participation in public policy and government initiatives along with ongoing committee work.
