Monday, March 03, 2003

Antivirus firm takes on junk e-mail Not to be outdone by the folks described in the article below, Trend Micro announced a server-based spam filtering tool, currently available only for Sun Solaris but with Windows and Linux versions on the way. Apparently the anti-spam movement has reached critical mass. But the movement is fraught with argument and competing factions vying for the one, correct, infallible method. Meanwhile, corporate forces have capitalized on consumer frustration and have begun marketing tools and services which are imperfect, at best. The potential tragedy is that consumers may quickly become frustrated with these tools and give up. 9:58:08 AM    Oh yeah? [] Going to Extremes to Fight Spam A report in Wired describes a new anti-spam e-mail tool which uses two methods generally discredited by the anti-spam community. The system comprises a whitelist and a challenge/response component. A whitelist means that only mail from an approved sender gets through, while a challenge/response system means that a sender must reply to a challenge e-mail to prove the message actually came from them. The second method can be circumvented by wily spammers, while the whitelist increases the probability that legitimate e-mail may be lost, overlooked, or blocked. 9:50:49 AM    Oh yeah? []