America Online Inc. has decided not to fully support Microsoft's Sender ID spam-fighting plan citing intellectual property concerns from the Internet Engineering Task Force and the open-source community.

Spam reports from America Online members dropped from a daily average of almost 11 million in November 2003 to a daily average of about 2.2 million last month, the company said this week.

America Online and Yahoo plan to begin using technology to verify the source of e-mail messages in coming months as both companies work to stop spam e-mail.

Two scourges -- viruses and spam -- are the most vexing e-mail issues for CIOs, according to a survey conducted by Ferris Research Inc. and Computerworld. Regulatory compliance isn't far behind.

Savvis Communications, one of the world's largest ISPs, said it is terminating service to about 40 of its customers who have been using its networks for spamming purposes.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Wolle awarded what is believed to be the largest spam judgment ever to Robert Kramer, an ISP owner who had accused three companies of sending his 5, 000 customers millions of pieces of spam in 2003.

The lawsuits are among the first filed under a new U.S. law called CAN-SPAM, which went into effect in January.

An industry organization representing heavyweight e-mail providers Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc. and EarthLink Inc. released recommendations yesterday for ending spam e-mail.

The technology hasn't been widely adopted, but spammers are taking it up at a faster rate than legitimate e-mailers.

While IP addresses in the U.S. made up just 28% of the spam-sending addresses in a survey by CipherTrust Inc., those addresses sent out much more unsolicited commercial e-mail than spammers from other nations.