Facebook has joined the board of directors of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group  – that’s  MAAWG for short. Catchy name, right?

MAAWG is headquartered in San Francisco and through its members, represents one billion mailboxes worldwide. The group tackles spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and other online exploitation on an industry level.

Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer said: “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 20th general meeting will be held in Washington DC from October 4-6, with professional training sessions for the industry as well as ongoing committee work. The focus this year will be on participation in public policy and government initiatives.

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 networking site will work with other MAAWG members to develop industry practices to safeguard end-users.

The company joins the board at the same time as India-based telecommunications provider Tata Communications.

“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.

The other MAAWG board members are AOL, AT&T, Cloudmark, Comcast, Cox Communications, Eloqua, France Telecom, Goodmail Systems, Openwave Systems, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Communications and Yahoo!

I’m not too familiar with MAAWG so I have little to say about its achievements to date. However, it seems absolutely fitting that Facebook should take its place on a industry committee of this type. The site has 500 million users worldwide and messaging is a core function for most Facebook users.
As a regular Facebook user, I’ve seen my fair share of spammy messages. Lately I’ve been receiving phishing attacks in my email inbox that purport to be a private message from another Facebook user but actually lead to another site. While serving on the board of MAAWG is no silver bullet, it’s good to see Facebook making the effort.