How Companies Fight Spamming by Sonya Tormaschy & Marc Eggert E-Commerce: Tuesday & Thursdays; 1:30 – 2:45

Agenda types of software used by each company how spam stoppers are getting better importance of ROI (Return on Investment) logic of combining antispam, antivirus, and antifraud software spam competition techniques for finding addresses groups who fight against spam history and future of spam recommendations

Pier 1 Imports MailFrontier used with Microsoft Exchange it protects enterprises from all -borne threats stops all unwanted before it enters your network protects against Spam, Viruses, Fraudulent s, & Policy violations stopping 97.95% of spam

Charter Communications IronPort C60 designed to handle larger volumes of web based console biggest problem is its management capabilities manages performance metrics, reporting, anti-spam and anti-virus scans mail for words and phrases set by corporate policies stopping 95% of spam

Catholic Diocese of Richmond PowerTools from Nemx scans for keywords defined administrators scans message body for keywords & sentences scans for attachments scans for banned senders auto-add disclaimers to messages uses the content filtering (messages you can and cannot receive) 65% spam reduction rate

First Banking Services of Florida Mail Warden Pro (from Wareford Technologies, Ireland) secures SMTP mail servers (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) prevents explicit content, loss of data, racial and harassment jokes state-of-the-art protection 97% spam detection rate no additional software needed prevents spam from any country or language

How spam stoppers are getting better With the increasing amount of spam being imported daily, spam stoppers are getting better by selling more efficient user friendly software that is decreasing the amount of spam being sent to in-boxes. In the future the spam stopping industry will not decline, because there are computer hackers that will eventually find a way to get around your spam software, which will result in the demand for better, faster and stronger anti-spamming software.

Importance of ROI ROI – Return on Investment; each company did not perform a ROI, which was not a very reasonable approach because if they would have done this they could have concluded whether or not if by going with the choices they made would have been the best for their situation.

What is the logic of combining antispam, antivirus, and antifraud software? product marketing ad-ware, spy-ware, viruses and identity theft “warm and fuzzy feeling around the heart” – Rolf Butz cost factor vendor loyalty gaining consumers trust

Spam Competitors Most spam comes from individuals More than 2 billion spam s sent daily Most competition for spam comes from competitors Techniques for finding addresses Scanning chat rooms & news groups for sign Buying lists from other spammers Generating addresses using common words

Groups who fight against spamming WHOA – reports harassing spam to ISP providers SpamCop – interprets full header of spam SpamCon – uses Can-Spam Act Laws ISP’s – lawsuits filed by four major ISP’s AOL EarthLink Yahoo Microsoft

History of Spam First spam sent in 1978 Arpanet; to advertise conference for new technology 320 addresses allowed in To: line, resent 3 times Davis Wolfgang Hawke First major spammer Former Neo-Nazi leader

History of Spam continued… Passed in 2003 laws that regulate commercial s accurate header, subject line, and opt-out option disclose advertisements and provide postal address punishments – heavy fines and/or jail time Can-Spam Act

Future of Spam Will get worse before it gets better finding ways to get around laws obtain permission to send s could lead to identity theft

Recommendations do not display your address in chat rooms or newsgroups Make addresses into an image Alter address when posted online then alert others to remove no_spam Read all privacy statements Check all opt-in and opt-out boxes Consider using two addresses Send copy of spam to Complain to users ISP Be aware of current scams