McAfee.com kills spam with new software

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By Sam Costello

(IDG) -- McAfee.com Tuesday gave users another weapon to add to their arsenals in the never-ending battle against spam when it announced the release of its new SpamKiller software.

The software will help users filter spam out of e-mail and keep it out, says Atri Chatterjee, vice president of worldwide marketing for Sunnyvale, California, McAfee.com. The software connects to a user's POP or MAPI e-mail account and scans all incoming messages for signs that they may be spam, he says.

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SpamKiller comes preconfigured with a set of filters that route messages that appear to be spam into their own folder, he says. Users can also create their own filters and download new ones when they become available, much like antivirus updates, he says. The filters scan for keywords, repeated punctuation marks, commonly-known spam domains, and other well-known features of spam, he says.

E-Mail Options

The user can configure the software to respond in a number of ways when an e-mail is identified as spam, including permanently blocking mail from that address, automatically forwarding the mail, along with a complaint, to the spammer's service provider, and sending a message back to the spammer indicating that the e-mail address is no longer valid, Chatterjee says.

The software can also be configured with a "friends" list and users on that list will never have their e-mail blocked, he adds.

McAfee.com acquired SpamKiller, and its author, in April. The company will initially offer SpamKiller as downloadable software that runs on a user's desktop but will convert it into a managed service in the fall, Chatterjee says. McAfee.com already offers managed antivirus, firewall, and content filtering services. Users who buy the software now will be offered an "attractive" path for moving to the managed service, though they will not be required to do so, he says.

Anti-Spam Service

When the program becomes a Web service, it will be integrated into McAfee.com's Grid Security Services initiative, which uses XML to create a security system in which all participating McAfee.com customers will share security data, he says. Also targeted for future updates is support for IMAP and Webmail e-mail accounts, he says.

SpamKiller will be a useful tool even for users who have spam filtering installed at their Internet gateways or e-mail servers, Chatterjee says.

"Security needs to be done both at the gateway and at the desktop level," he says. Spam filtering done by Internet service providers "is one level of protection, you can always use another."

McAfee.com SpamKiller is immediately available worldwide at a price of $39.95.

Sam Costello is a Boston-based correspondent for the IDG News Service.