spam, email and spam filter Information

MX Logic Finds Nearly 50 Percent of All Spam is Bugged by Spammers, Allowing Them to Validate Addresses and Send More Spam

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 13, 2004--MX Logic, Inc., a leading provider of innovative email defense solutions that ensure email protection and security for enterprises, service providers, government organizations, resellers and their customers, today announced that in the last year, nearly 50 percent of all spam has been "bugged" by spammers.
To ensure an address is valid and ripe for future spamming, spammers embed "Web bugs" or "spam beacons" -- pieces of HTML code -- into their spam messages. Spam beacons are a variant of Web bugs, which traditionally have been used by Web marketing companies to measure page views and track Web surfing behavior. When an end user opens or even previews an email containing an embedded spam beacon, it sends its signal back to the spammer, validating the address. The spam beacon is a query or path information string that can contain an encoded form of the recipient's email address embedded in a Web request.

Sending Email MX Logic detects the use of spam beacons in incoming messages and blocks them, thereby helping prevent the future delivery of spam and email address harvesting for its customers. MX Logic denies spammers the ability to know when and if their spam email is being read and keeps them from verifying the recipient's email address.

Once considered merely a nuisance, spam has become a costly burden for enterprises. Ferris Research estimates that in 2003, the total cost of spam to U.S. businesses in lost productivity was $10 billion. In the month of April, the MX Logic Threat Center reported that 77 percent of all email traffic filtered by the company was spam.

Reading Email "Millions of users are unaware that spammers have the ability to track when they view and open their email," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer, MX Logic. "While Web bugs are not a new phenomenon to the Internet, this new data shows that nearly one out of two spam messages now contain these beacons. This reinforces the fact that spammers are using increasingly deceptive tools to invade end users' privacy and harvest valid email addresses.

For the past year I have been using a program called "Boxtrapper". Until this time I had been relying on various spam filters that used keywords or other factors to determine if an email was spam. The success rate for this type of filtering varied as spammers eventually found ways around the "formula" being used by the filter. For example, the word "Valium" may be flagged as a spam indicator while the misspelled version, "Va Lium", would get by unnoticed. This is just one of many examples of how spammers manipulate words to beat filtering. The biggest problem is when spammers "spoof" the header information in an email so it's nearly impossible to trace who sent the message. I have even seen instances of people receiving spam emails that appear to have come from themselves!

Storing Email "The organizations that are best protected leverage dynamic 'enterprise-class,' around-the-clock email defense, such as MX Logic's Email Defense Service, to ensure that their end users are protected against ever-evolving spammer tactics," Chasin added. "Static solutions simply can't offer the protection necessary today."

Nyms not only combats spam, it is one more layer of protection against other email threats viruses, worms, spyware, adware, phishing scams, and more. Better than a spam filter, Nyms puts you in control of your incoming email because it uses disposable, alias addresses. When your Nyms email aliases are shared with spammers, you can simply disable that Nyms alias and stop the spam from flooding your real inbox. spam filter to pinpoint where unsolicited messages are coming from and kill spam at its source.

Email Software According to the Yankee Group, unsolicited commercial e-mail consumes corporate resources, and its associated productivity costs can add up to at least $4 billion a year. Spam increases network and storage costs, and raises corporate liability and threats to the enterprise. Over the past year, MX Logic found that spam increased 67 percent.

" critical communications channel. As such, enterprises of all sizes and from all industries are increasingly looking for relief from the constant onslaught of spam, " said John Street, CEO, MX Logic. "MX Logic's Email Defense Service removes the burden of spam management from FMIC, allowing the company to instead focus on strategic business initiatives."

Antispam Software MX Logic became the first managed email defense company to integrate spam beacon blocking into its email defense service in March 2003.

Fight Spam About MX Logic

Stoping Spam MX Logic, Inc., provides innovative email defense solutions that ensure email protection and security for enterprises, service providers, government organizations, and resellers and their customers. Deployed as a managed service or on-premise software, the company's feature-rich solution suite is the industry's most comprehensive, flexible and easy to use.

Block Spam Founded by messaging industry pioneers, MX Logic has delivered numerous industry firsts to the enterprise spam market, including becoming the first managed service provider to: leverage Bayesian Statistical Classification; provide spam beacon ("Web bug") blocking; offer quarantine management via email; provide corporate-level quarantine release reports that help reduce inappropriate email while decreasing corporate liability; and deliver a solution for tracking URL click-throughs from email to the Web, providing increased corporate control and security.

Spam Emails Through the company's managed service offering, MX Logic processes millions of messages per day for over 1,500 organizations, including EnCana, Hyundai Motor America, Sports Authority, YMCA, Service Master and U.S.I. Holdings Corporation. In addition, MX Logic is the only email defense company to offer both a managed service and a turnkey, carrier-grade software solution for service providers. For more information, visit www.mxlogic.com.

Email Account Contacts

Sending Email
MX Logic
Elizabeth Mars, 303-809-9750
emars@mxlogic.com
or
GroundFloor Media
Jennifer Dulles Jansky, 303-722-9552
jjansky@groundfloormedia.com

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