SPAM Bouncer
You'll probably be familiar with the twin menaces of email borne viruses and unsolicited email, commonly referred to as spam. You'll understand the annoyance caused by that avalanche of junk email which somehow finds its way uninvited into your inbox, destroying the efficiency of your email system, consuming expensive bandwidth and wasting your valuable time. SPAM Bouncer is a unique and exclusive product, which filters unwanted and harmful email messages out of your inbox saving your time and money.
The Problem
More than half of email messages transmitted on the Internet today are spam, whilst analysts predict that spam will account for 70 percent of all emails by April 2004.
Lost Productivity
A Gartner survey in 2002 revealed that staff were already spending an average of 49 minutes per day (10% of their time) managing their email. Further, the IT department is increasingly occupied supporting users with spam issues and dealing with the fallout from virus infections, rather than working on productive projects.
Wasted Bandwidth
Downloading unwanted email costs money in telephone and data transfer charges. The bandwidth consumed means your Internet connection runs slower, destroying the efficiency of your entire operation as commerce becomes ever more reliant on Internet applications. European commission figures put the cost of spam to European businesses in connection charges alone at £6.4bn per year.
Pornographic Emails
A significant proportion of unsolicited email messages contain pornographic content causing distress to the recipient and creating dangers for younger users. Additionally, a number of employees have already successfully sued their employers for failing to provide adequate protection from pornographic emails.
Fraud & Identify Theft
Emails using social engineering techniques and spoofed web sites to dupe the reader into disclosing confidntial information such as online banking access details, addresses and credit card numbers are a growing trend. There is also the infamous Nigerian 419 scam in which a deposed African dictator offers a cut of millions of dollars for your help transferring it from a secret account in Africa to yours. People were stung for an estimated £8.4 million last year in the UK alone through advanced fee and other forms of online fraud.
Email Bourne Viruses
The convergence of virus and spam technology means that the problem will only get worse. Recent virus attacks such as the Sobig and Klez worms have brought corporate email systems to a halt, clogged inboxes with useless mails, cost industry billions in clean up costs and have the potential to inflict terminal damage on today's online businesses.
The Solution
SPAM Bouncer is the result of hundreds of hours of research and development, a unique product utilising advanced technology to rid your inbox of irritating spam and harmful viruses. You no longer have to download and filter junk messages, saving your time and bandwidth. SPAM Bouncer operates on our powerful mail server cluster, every email destined for your mailbox is scanned and checked by a number of different processes at the point of entry into our network.
Heuristics Engine
Thousands of tests check the message headers and content for tell tale signs of spam. The originating mail server and senders address are verified to prevent spoofing. We proactively monitor and adapt the tests used by SPAM Bouncer to any new techniques the spammers employ.
Bayesian Probability Algorithms
Bayesian algorithms are used to build up a database of the characteristics of unwanted mail and the characteristics of legitimate mail. The database can then be consulted to determine the likelihood of any particular message being spam. Furthermore, through continually analysing messages the database is actively updated as the nature of spam changes, creating a form of self evolving intelligence.
Checksum Databases
Any message has a unique checksum, as users report unsolicited mail messages, their checksums are added to a database. Several collaborative checksum databases are consulted to ascertain whether the message concerned matches one previously identified as spam by another Internet user.
Real Time Blackhole Lists
Several real time blackhole lists (RBLs) are maintained on the Internet which catalog known sources of spam. SPAM Bouncer checks for the presence of the originating mail servers in any of these lists.
Virus Scanner
All our hosting accounts include virus scanning as standard, a feature which operates in unison with SPAM Bouncer. Virus definitions are checked for and updated automatically ensuring that you are protected against threats as they emerge. The virus scanner is capable of detecting all known virus types, including polymorphic or self-encrypting viruses, it is even capable of scanning the contents of compressed archives such as zip and rar files ensuring that no virus bearing email can make it to your inbox. Each positive test assigns a weighted score to the incoming message. The final score is used to determine whether or not the message is spam.
Reliability
This scoring system combined with the quantity and diversity of tests performed means that unlike most competing products, the likelihood of SPAM Bouncer incorrectly identifying a message as spam is negligible and makes it nigh on impossible for spammers and virus writers to craft their messages to bypass the filters.
