Recipients Reputation…
As an administrator who works for an email provider that processes millions of emails per day, new spam fighting techniques are always of interest to me. Tonight I came across this article on slashdot.
The technique is based on a patent-pending mathematical algorithm based on the readers reputation of receiving legitimate email to spam email as opposed to scanning the content of a message. The company Abaca Technology Corp. is claiming a 99% accuracy rating and backing it with a money back guarantee. The appliances are being targeted to small to mid size organizations however on their faq they do mention their technology is being utilized by large ISP’s.
The company provides several appliances. As an alternative to the appliance, they also offer virtual appliances for VMWare ESX which may be useful for larger organizations to scale the technology on beefier hardware.
I don’t see this as a magic bullet to the spam problem as the economic incentive is still there to spammers. But adding a new technology to a spam fighters arsenal is always welcome.
If only Mr. Kirsch would release this as an open-source technology instead of patenting the algorithm, besides he is already a multi millionare.