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 email 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 email-borne threats

• stops all unwanted email before it enters your network

• protects against Spam, Viruses, Fraudulent emails, & Policy violations

• stopping 97.95% of spam

• http://www.mailfrontier.com/

Charter Communications

• IronPort C60

• designed to handle larger volumes of email

• 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

• http://www.ironport.com/products/ironport_c600.html

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

• http://www.nemx.com/products/securexchange/index.asp

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 email protection

• 97% spam detection rate

• no additional software needed

• prevents spam from any country or language

• http://www.seattlelab.com/Products/mailwardenpro/default.asp

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 email 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 emails sent daily

• Most competition for spam comes from competitors

Techniques for finding email addresses• Scanning chat rooms & news groups for the @ sign

• Buying lists from other spammers

• Generating email addresses using common words

Groups who fight against spamming

• WHOA – reports harassing spam to ISP providers

• SpamCop – interprets full header of spam email

• 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 emails

• 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 emails could lead to identity theft

Recommendations• do not display your email address in chat rooms or newsgroups

• Make email addresses into an image

• Alter address when posted online

• doe@no_spam.hotmail.com then alert others to remove no_spam portion• Read all privacy statements

• Check all opt-in and opt-out boxes

• Consider using two email addresses

• Send copy of spam email to spam@uce.gov

• Complain to users ISP

• Be aware of current scams