Bazza
24-03-2005, 20:06
I'm sure you don't need to be told spam is a huge problem. IBM announced a new service called FairUCE that will not only block spam, but will redirect the spam back at the senders. While this is an interesting, and no doubt very satisfying idea, there could be some problems.
IBM said in a February report that 76 percent of all e-mails were spam and some two percent of all e-mails are virus infected. Billions of spam messages are blocked each day by the major ISPs, who have teams dedicated just for fighting spam. IBM's FairUCE uses a giant database of known spam senders, which is similar to the Blackhole and Whitelists that many businesses use to block spam.
Other companies offer anti-spam technology, but IBM may be the only company that is willing to fling spam back at the senders. The problem lies with hitting the right computers. Often the spam companies compromise innocent systems and use the zombie computers to send the spam.
In another ironic twist, IBM may be placed on spam blocking lists, if it implements FairUCE. Domains and IP addresses are placed on these lists, after network admins complain about spam. Many modern spam blockers uses these lists to determine which mails to accept and reject.
IBM says that they are not concerned about liability, even in cases where innocent senders might be misidentified as spammers, because all the technology does is bounce back the e-mails.
IBM said in a February report that 76 percent of all e-mails were spam and some two percent of all e-mails are virus infected. Billions of spam messages are blocked each day by the major ISPs, who have teams dedicated just for fighting spam. IBM's FairUCE uses a giant database of known spam senders, which is similar to the Blackhole and Whitelists that many businesses use to block spam.
Other companies offer anti-spam technology, but IBM may be the only company that is willing to fling spam back at the senders. The problem lies with hitting the right computers. Often the spam companies compromise innocent systems and use the zombie computers to send the spam.
In another ironic twist, IBM may be placed on spam blocking lists, if it implements FairUCE. Domains and IP addresses are placed on these lists, after network admins complain about spam. Many modern spam blockers uses these lists to determine which mails to accept and reject.
IBM says that they are not concerned about liability, even in cases where innocent senders might be misidentified as spammers, because all the technology does is bounce back the e-mails.