Broadband providers in the UK are taking an increasingly proactive role in preventing suspected spam emails from reaching the inboxes of subscribers.
A new report from email certification specialist Return Path has revealed that the number of emails that are being filtered out by major internet services providers (ISPs) in Britain rose by almost 50 per cent in the last year.
Among the ten most popular ISPs in the UK, an average of 14.9 per cent of emails sent out by marketers did not reach inboxes between July and December 2010, up from 10.5 per cent in December 2009.
BT was found to be enacting the highest level of filtering, with 25.6 per cent of marketing emails blocked by the ISP, while other providers such as Orange and Virgin Media have been removing a fifth of advertising messages or sending them to spam folders.
According to Return Path, this trend is being driven by the growing pressure on providers to protect consumers from malicious emails, such as phishing scams or spoofing messages.
The need for measures of this kind have been underlined by a report published by data security specialist Symantec this week, which showed that the ratio of spam in email traffic in the UK in May 2011 stands at 75.4 per cent.
However, Return Path's report observed that this also means many legitimate newsletters and emails that have been specifically requested by users are failing to get through.
The organisation suggested this is because the messages sent by many marketers share technical, reputation and content characteristics with spam, while senders are also failing to properly monitor the delivery success rates of their emails.
Richard Gibson, channel relationship manager at Return Path, said: "Responsible marketers must begin using the right tools, as well as following industry best practice, to ensure their email communication does not appear as spam to ISPs."
