VANCOUVER, BC - JULY 22 - ActiveState, the leader in enterprise email
management software, today announced the availability of the
"ActiveState Field Guide to Spam," a living compilation of advanced
tricks used by spammers to hide their messages from spam filters.
Conceived by Dr. John Graham-Cumming and compiled by all members of the
ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the collection is regularly updated as
new tricks are identified.  The Field Guide to Spam is freely available
from the ActiveState website, and in ActiveState's quarterly newsletter
of the same name.

The compilation also contributes to the creation of new filtering rules
in the company's server-based email filtering solution, PureMessage.  As
new spam techniques are discovered, ActiveState's team of spam analysts
create heuristics to identify them, and provide these heuristics to
customers as part of their regular PureMessage SpamCheck updates.  

"Just as anti-virus companies provide a constant stream of new
signatures and detection techniques to allow enterprises to keep up with
the changing tactics of the virus writers, anti-spam providers can offer
similar capabilities to assist enterprises in staying abreast of
spammers," said Arabella Hallawell, research director at Gartner Inc.  

The Field Guide to Spam provides a comprehensive breakdown of new spam
techniques, with each entry including a description, popularity ranking,
complexity level, and specific real-world examples.  One example from
the more than 25 tricks chronicled in the Guide is dubbed "Invisible
Ink."  In this trick, spammers use HTML to insert innocent words in the
same font color as the message background, making the words invisible to
the recipient.  If a spam filter can't detect color, then these
invisible words - often taken from online news sites - could falsely
indicate that the message is legitimate. A sophisticated filter, such as
PureMessage by ActiveState, will recognize the attempt to disguise the
message, and determine that the email is likely to be spam.

"Since I started tracking spammers' tricks, I've seen spammers adapt at
an alarming rate, with new tactics continuing to appear as new and more
powerful filters are made available," said Graham-Cumming.  "As spammers
become more sophisticated, companies need to take a hard look at whether
their email filtering products provide the necessary protection.  By
taking a 'cocktail' approach to spam filtering - including adaptive
techniques such as Bayesian classification - products such as
PureMessage offer this security by delivering a range of tools to
accurately identify and quarantine malicious and inappropriate email."

"By now, every enterprise knows that spam is a huge problem.  However,
statistics alone are of limited value to those trying to combat it,"
said Chris Kraft, director of product management, ActiveState. "The
Field Guide to Spam exposes the latest in spammer innovation, enabling
enterprises to ensure suitable defenses against now quantifiable spam
tactics." 

For more information, to register for the quarterly newsletter, or to
download a new whitepaper on spammers' tricks entitled "Spam: A Many
Rendered Thing," please visit
http://www.ActiveState.com/Field_Guide_to_Spam.

About PureMessage by ActiveState
PureMessage by ActiveState is a server-based email filtering solution
that enables the easy creation and management of spam, virus, and other
communication policies for inbound and outbound message streams at the
gateway.  PureMessage safely identifies and quarantines spam using a
combination of heuristics, spam directories, and spam signatures,
delivering the most effective spam filtering with low IT administration
and end-user effort.  More information is at:
http://www.ActiveState.com/PureMessage.

About ActiveState Corp.
ActiveState enables IT professionals and enterprises to increase
productivity and organizational efficiency.  PureMessage by ActiveState
empowers organizations to take control of their email communications to
protect against spam and viruses, and to enforce email policy.
Additional information on ActiveState's industrial strength anti-spam
software for enterprises and professional tools for programmers is
available at: http://www.ActiveState.com.

Media & Analyst Inquiries:
Lori Pike, ActiveState
LoriP@[...].com
604.808.6655

Katey Stewart, Horn Group
kstewart@[...].com
415.905.4019

ActiveState and PureMessage are trademarks of ActiveState Corp. All
other company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.


Copyright ActiveState Corporation 2003.

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