Spam Killers Impact Legitimate Marketers - Part Two

In the last issue we discussed the impact of spam on legitimate email marketers, tactics to combat being labeled as a spammer, and some spam killing software solutions. In this week’s issue we’re going to continue to explore this topic and how spam and email overload is affecting organizations at the enterprise level.

Spam is not only an annoying problem for individuals, it’s also an expensive and growing burden for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and large organizations in general. Unsolicited email messages (UCE) consume enormous quantities of email server disk space, take up network bandwidth and waste employee time.

A survey by MessageLabs found that it took the average worker 10 minutes a day to clear spam, the equivalent to $1,534 a year in lost time. AT&T’s ISP division claims they spend $35,000 per month fighting spam. AOL Time Warner says they spend up to 15% of user subscription fees to fight spam. Jupiter Research predicts that UCE per user will increase from 698 a year in 2002 to 1,400 a year by 2006 (though there are those who would contend those figures are already far too low).

If these claims are true and unless more drastic measures are implemented, ISP’s will be spending even more money and companies will be losing even more money in wasted time. At the enterprise level therefore, emails are being filtered and blocked so much so that legitimate emails are also not getting through making life miserable for newsletter publishers and legitimate marketers. Are there any working solutions for the “good guys”?

Identifying Legitimate Email

There are a few programs out there looking at the spam problem from the opposite end of the spectrum. Instead of trying to identify and delete suspect email, these programs are all about identifying and allowing legitimate email. Let’s look at some of these solutions now.

IronPort’s Bonded Sender Program

IronPort requires senders of email to post money as a guarantee their email is not spam. Recipients who receive an email from a Bonded Sender have the option to complain to their ISP, employer, or IronPort. The Bonded Sender will then accrue a financial charge against the money they posted.

Vanquish

Like IronPort, Vanquish also contends that controlling spam can best be done by hitting spammers where it hurts: in the pocketbook. Vanquish requires that emailers include a “penalty button” backed by cash that they never lose, as long as they don’t irritate strangers. However, if a recipient is annoyed and clicks the penalty button, the click will charge the sender. Money from the spammer is then distributed to the affected ISPs or email providers.

Habeas

Habeas does not concentrate on filtering spam out; instead it focuses on allowing non-spam in. It has created a system based on “Sender Warranted Email (SM)” (SWE) which guarantees to recipients that SWE-approved individuals and companies are sending email that is not spam.

The way it works is that when an authorized Habeas email marketer sends out their email, they include in the email a set of Habeas SWE headers (haiku poems) which are trademarked and copyrighted by Habeas, and which Habeas licenses to the sender. Habeas’ trademarks and copywrites give them the ability to prosecute any unlicensed sender using their SWEs to the full extent of the law.

Habeas works with all email clients and it can be used in conjunction with other anti-spam services that block spam-like messages. Spam killing filters can be set to detect the SWE text string in the header to ensure that the email will get through.

Peer-to-Peer Applications

Peer-to-peer computing is nothing new. The Internet in its early days was actually considered a peer-to-peer network. The infamous Napster or any sharing of computer resources and services by direct exchange between systems is considered a peer-to-peer application. Now, peer-to-peer has made its way into the anti-spam business, too.

Cloudmark’s SpamNet

Cloudmark’s peer-to-peer spam filtering technology, developed in part by one of Napster’s co-founders, relies on a user community to police for spam. Using a free Outlook plug-in called “Folsom,” users (given the apt title, “SpamFighters”) can share information about identified spam with the entire community at once.

Cloudmark posts current counts right on its home page: Total SpamFighters (now over 150,000), Time saved today, Emails processed today, and spam caught today. SpamNet uses a member-driven “trust rating” that affects how the community treats a piece of email. Spam reports from members with high trust rating weigh more in the decision to identify a message as spam.

The SpamNet community is growing rapidly, but the down side is that if too many SpamFighters label your newsletter or legitimate email as spam, you’ll be blocked and likely to never have your scarlet letter “S” removed.

Cloudmark has also developed a server-side solution for Unix, Linux and Solaris called Razor.

Other Server-Side Solutions

ISPs and large organizations are blocking spam at the server level, effecting all users on the server and requiring only one point for updating or altering spam filters. Here are a few:

Mail-Filters.com

Mail-Filters.com has two spam fighting tools for businesses. SpamRepellent is a hosted service designed to filter spam before it arrives at the customer site. SpamCure is a server-based system that filters e-mail at the customer site.

BrightMail

BrightMail consists of human programmers and automated systems creating rules to identify each piece of spam. These rules then update BrightMail’s customers’ email servers, where every piece of email is checked. Brightmail maintains a collection of decoy emailboxes (over 100 million) created specifically to attract spam, making it possible for Brightmail to stay on top of current attacks.

MailMarshal

MailMarshal provides email content security and control. They can address email filtering needs, monitor or control any email entering OR LEAVING an organization, protect against viruses, and generate comprehensive usage reports.

ActiveState

ActiveState has an anti-spam gateway product called PerlMX, an email filtering system for spam and virus protection and corporate policy enforcement.

The proliferation of email, whether legitimate or illegitimate, has created a real predicament for individuals and organizations alike. Despite all the solutions we presented in these two newsletters, none seem to be “perfect.” Will the government step in with airtight legislation? Only time will tell.

Related Links:

Spam Killers Impact Legitimate Marketers - Part 1

The Cost of Spam Calculator, Computer Mail Services, Inc.

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