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