Cloudmark Tuesday announced a tool bar that subscribers of ISPs using Cloudmark’s e-mail security products can leverage to
report spam and phishing attacks.
Called the Cloudmark Network Feedback System, the interface for Web-based e-mail offered by ISPs gives subscribers the same
power to report spam, phishing, and other messaging threats as users of Cloudmark’s client software, called Cloudmark Desktop,
says Jamie de Guerre, technical director of program management with the company.
Spam and phishing complaints forwarded by subscribers are immediately fed into Cloudmark’s Collaborative Security Network,
made up of a group of e-mail users who regularly report to the company spam, phishing, viruses, and other threats.
By giving subscribers an easy way to report spam that lands in their inboxes, ISPs can help Cloudmark continuously improve
its spam-blocking capabilities and give their subscribers a sense that their efforts make a difference, says de Guerre. Each
subscriber’s input into the feedback system is tracked and analyzed, so that ISPs can easily tell reporting subscribers how
many spam blasts they’ve helped to contain, he says.
The Cloudmark network Feedback System is available for free now to ISPs who subscribe to the vendor’s premium support package.
Separately, Cloudmark is developing anti-spam technology to help mobile providers keep spam off of their text-messaging networks,
de Guerre says. The company is working with the OEMs that build text-messaging networks for mobile operators to develop fingerprinting
technology to identify spam traversing those networks, he says. Such technology is required, since attempting to catch spam
using the word-matching filters that currently exist for e-mail won’t be effective because text messages tend to be written
in short-hand lingo, he says.
The company hopes to release this new technology during the second half of the year.
