Australian Spam Filtering Company Showcases
spamtrap At ISPCON

28 April 2003

Baltimore, Wednesday 23 April 2003 – messagecare, an Australian company launched by the founders of OzEmail, Australia's most successful ISP, today unveiled spamtrap, a spam filtering service for ISPs at ISPCON, a leading ISP industry event, in Baltimore.

'I'm delighted to be here at ISPCON showcasing spamtrap, our Australian designed network-based spam filter for ISPs,' said messagecare Chairman and OzEmail founder, Sean Howard. 'For ISPs seeking an effective, easy-to-implement and no-cost spam filter for their customers – spamtrap is the answer. spamtrap is a 'set and forget' service that requires no intervention or maintenance by the ISP or the user – spamtrap does all the work for them.'

'Unlike other ISP spam filtering products, spamtrap requires no capital or operational investment by the ISP,' added Mr Howard. 'Through using spamtrap, the ISP gains an immediate revenue-generating spam filtering service and their customers benefit from a much cleaner email experience. It's a win-win outcome for everyone, except, of course, for the spammers.'

'spamtrap,' added Howard 'unlike other spam filtering products for ISPs, requires no capital or operational investment.

It's a win-win outcome for everyone
Launched last month in Australia, spamtrap Thas quickly become one of the leading spam filtering solutionsoption for users and ISPs in Australia. spamtrap is currently in trials with several of Australia's largest ISPs.

spamtrap is also a founding member of the Australian No Spam campaign which was launched last week by the Australian Internet Industry Association. The No Spam campaign encourages Australian email users to try out the service free, as part of an industry-wide consumer education campaign, to reduce the amount of spam flooding the mailboxes of the country's 6 million users.

'Like other parts of the world, spam has reached critical levels in Australia, with the Federal Government announcing it is intending to legislate to ban spam,' said Mr Howard.usersSpamTrap is rapidly deployed, growing '

The spamtrap service offers ISPs and their customers many benefits including:

No financial or operational investment
spamtrap requires no financial or operational outlay by the ISP – there's no software, hardware, licenses or inventory to purchase.

Immediate revenue
ISPs leverage their existing billing relationship with customers, billing annual subscriptions twelve months in advance or on a monthly basis. ISPs receive monthly billing reports detailing user activity and billing information.

Complete marketing, communications and management kit
ISPs can re-brand spamtrap as their own product using spamtrap's management tools to market and manage the service to their customers, including fully-documented processes, end-user communication templates, customer support tools, system reporting and customer management facilities and brandable web interfaces.

Comprehensive technical support
ISPs benefit from a fully-documented customer support training manual, 24 x 7 2nd level support for technical staff and a library of knowledge base articles for its web-based support system.

Fast implementation
ISPs can implement the service in weeks not months. Minimal server configuration changes and support training requirements as well as easy customisation of the end-user marketing and communication templates make deploying spamtrap fast and simple.

spamtrap provides any ISP user with a POP3 account an easy-to-use, low cost solution to unwanted junk mail. Other user benefits of the service include:

No customer software or ongoing management required
spamtrap is the ideal spam filter for technical and non-technical users alike, with no software to be downloaded by the end-user, no ongoing management of Include or Exclude Lists and no user intervention beyond the initial simple configuration.

Easy-to-use customer website
spamtrap provides a web-based message store that enables ISP customers to review, forward or delete their trapped spam (which is stored for 30 days). A customer can also access statistics on the amount of spam filtered and use a key-word based support engine for support questions.

No-risk free customer trial
spamtrap provides a 30-day no obligation free trial for all ISP customers. This simplifies the sales process by offering a risk-free environment to try the service. At the end of the trial, there's an easy subscription process for customers who don't want to return to their previous volumes of spam.

About spamtrap Technology
Using a global network of spam traps and proprietary collection techniques, spamtrap collects and classifies spam. Through a number of fuzzy logic algorithms, a unique 'fingerprint' of each spam message is recorded and added to spamtrap's real-time database.

When a user downloads their email, the messages are routed via spamtrap's filtering engine for scanning. As the messages are being scanned, the spamtrap system takes a 'fingerprint' of each message and compares it against the spam fingerprints in the real-time spamtrap Database. If a match is detected, it is declared spam and put in a quarantined message store to allow customers to view their trapped spam online. After 30 days, the spam is deleted.

spamtrap uses a late detection filtering technique scanning email just before it reaches the user. This technique enhances spamtrap's ability to identify a high proportion of spam.

The fingerprinting technique adopted by spamtrap protects the privacy of a user's email because the email itself is never examined, only its 'fingerprint'. The spamtrap system provides the same level of security as communication with Internet Service Providers. spamtrap does not store user passwords. When users login to the spamtrap website or download their email, authentication of their UserID and Password occurs at your mail servers and the verification is then provided to spamtrap. spamtrap simply verifies that the UserID is known and that the customer is enabled to use the service.