One of the more meaty topics this week has been the never-ending flood of spam:

• Barracuda and BarracudaCentral RBL – hidden pitfalls of this anti-spam service
• Important information for users of spamassassin – and bl.open-whois.org
• MessageLabs Stats: Spam Learns a New Language – foreign spam on the rise
• More Spam? Say it ain’t so! – all spam on the rise
• There Oughta Be A Law! – “Anti-Spam Legislation Around the World, Part 1″
• You might be a spammer if… – … you read this post’s comments without smiling

Widely reported this week was the news that AOL are no longer providing report cards on people who have received a high number of spam complaints. Fortunately this doesn’t affect Sign-Up.to, as we already closely monitor our feedback loops and will be in touch with clients long before they reached the 30% threshold that previously trigged a report card from AOL.

Speaking of reports, this week’s special mention must go to our very own Matt McNeill, who has painstakingly cleaned, sorted, and analysed over 200 million emails in order to present us with the most comprehensive Email Marketing Benchmark Report in the UK. Check it out for all sorts of statistical goodness related to industry averages for bounce rates, unsubscribes, clicks, and more.