STAMFORD, Conn., May 22, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Keep America Beautiful's Great American Cleanup Finale Week (May 26 through May 31) is now in its 18th year and it's the nation's largest annual community improvement program. This year, for the first time, in addition to picking up litter, Keep America Beautiful is teaming with Yahoo! Mail to combat a new type of trash -- spam in e-mail inboxes. Yahoo! Mail is co-sponsoring events across the country with Keep America Beautiful to encourage people to extend their cleanup efforts online.
Participants online are encouraged to help rid their e-mail boxes of unsolicited bulk e-mail (aka spam) by using SpamGuard, a patent-pending spam-filtering technology available to all Yahoo! Mail users. In addition, participants are being asked to pitch-in with online cleanup efforts by reporting any spam they receive through the "This is spam" link. This valuable user feedback is used to improve SpamGuard's ability to filter out spam. To learn more about the online cleanup, go to: http://promotions.yahoo.com/spamguard/
Yahoo! Mail's SpamGuard has proven to significantly reduce the amount of spam delivered to users inboxes and catches, on average, one billion spam messages per day.
As part of a larger global effort, Yahoo! Mail is building off of the anti-spam efforts that took place during Yahoo!'s Anti-Spam day on May 22nd in Europe and Australia.
Note: In 2002, the average American consumer received an estimated 2,300 pieces of spam e-mail. By the year 2007, consumers will be exposed to more than 3,600 spam messages annually - Jupiter Research
B-Roll Includes:
Shots of people picking up litter in the park, general community beautification shots, shot of e-mail box, shots of "SpamGuard" feature and typical spam found in Yahoo! Mail user's bulk mail folder, shots of microsite that describes how people can help in their communities, Yahoo! and Keep America Beautiful spokesperson interviews.
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