The Spam Problem

Spam is a serious email problem that is only getting worse. Leading industry analysts collectively agree that Spam proliferation is still on the increase. Spam currently accounts for approximately 80% of corporate email (this number varies regionally), but is predicted to account for 90% of email by 2008.

Marshal’s own research into spam has indicated that spam costs 4 cents (US) per message on average. On its own, that doesn’t sound like a lot but the spam issue is one of overwhelming numbers. One customer has reported that MailMarshal is capturing over 200,000 Spam messages a day. That’s a saving of US$8,000 per day in bandwidth and time.

Spam Is A Moving Target

Spam senders have a simple business model: they use other people's resources as much as possible. With very low operating costs, it only takes a few responses for a campaign to turn a profit. As spam detection percentages improve, spammers are constantly employing new technologies to get the message through, including:

In October 2004, agencies from 27 countries convened to attend the first international forum dedicated solely to addressing spam issues. Their aim was to improve cross-border collaboration in the fight against spam. Topics included law enforcement strategies, sharing of information and the reduction of cross-border barriers in battling spam.

European and Asian countries attending a similar conference in February 2005 pledged to work together and to promote international efforts in the battle against spam. A key attendee at this conference was China, which is estimated to be the source of more than 68 percent of spam globally.

Within the European Union itself, 13 member states have agreed to work together in tackling the spam originating from within the selected countries. Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom have ratified a similar agreement.

In Germany a cross-section of trade organizations have formed an alliance in the battle against spam at a national level.

A main intention of this increased collaborative activity is to use legislation to hit back at spammers. Several countries have introduced laws and regulations designed to give law enforcement a means of penalizing serious abusers. For example, the United States has introduced the CAN-SPAM Act, the European Union has the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive and Germany has the Tele-services Act.

Spam Volume Continues To Rise

Officials have brought several high-profile cases against spammers, with some resulting in successful prosecutions. However, the international cooperation and legislation seem to have little impact on combating spam. Despite the ongoing efforts, there continue to be year-on-year increases in spam originating from Europe, in particular France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. In fact, Europe has become a greater source of spam than the United States. Worldwide spam trends still rise, with a 94 percent increase in February 2005, compared to the same month in 2004.

Spam has also gone beyond being a major source of irritation in your inbox. Increasingly, spam is of an illegal nature. Offenders now deploy viruses and hacking methods to gain control of zombie servers and assist in spam delivery. Phish-type spam lures unwitting victims into divulging personal information to allow the attacker to steal their identity and/or gain access to their bank accounts.

Marshal's Anti-Spam Success Story

MailMarshal SMTP is an industry-leading anti-spam solution. In a recommended configuration, MailMarshal regularly achieves a spam catch rate of over 99 percent with a fractional percentage of false positives. (Results vary due to the regional nature of spam.) MailMarshal combines the best of automatic updating and local configuration approaches, to customize your response to spam.

The key to the success of MailMarshal lies in identifying spam at the gateway, before it enters the organization. MailMarshal applies a multi-tiered approach to anti-spam, employing an array of different methods to identify spam and minimize false positives.

These methods include: