Picture Spam Finally Meets Its Match

Spammers are closer to being defeated with SPAMfighter’s improved image spam detection and filtering.

(PRWEB) August 25, 2006 -- Researchers have recently announced that image spam is at an all time high. IT Security news recently reported that in the past three months, image spam has tripled. IronPort added that the size of these e-mails is approximately seven times larger than a normal spam mail. This has left e-mail users in frenzy. Fortunately, SPAMfighter has created a unique type of filter which can combat this spam.

Martin Thorborg has also noted this increase in image spam. “Spammers are beginning to use image spam because it is harder to detect by spam filters, drawing more attention to their phony marketing efforts.”

Spammers are beginning to use image spam because it is harder to detect by spam filters, drawing more attention to their phony marketing efforts.

SPAMfighter has worked hard to stop these types of spam for users as they take up more room than regular spam mails causing problems such as eating up e-mail space and using large amounts of bandwidth on network servers, to name a few. Get the latest version of the SPAMfighter spam filter here.

The most recent image spam works is by using multiple small images in e-mails advertising products such as stock shares and viagra. These images are too small for most spam filters to detect as spam, since they appear to be a legitimate e-mail and therefore cannot be detected.
SPAMfighter has created a way to gather these multiple small images into one and filter based on this.

SPAMfighter is a community based spam filter. The SPAMfighter filter uses votes from this community to help determine if a mail is spam. With image spam, the small images are combined into one large image. The coding of this larger, single image is then scanned and the previously mentioned community’s votes are used to help determine if an e-mail is spam. Read more about SPAMfighters anti-spam filter here

Many other spam filters are not able to do this, as they have no way of determining whether a graphic in an e-mail is spam, or a legitimate graphic being sent. Furthermore, these graphics are continuously being changed in color and size, making it so no image spam mail is exactly the same.

SPAMfighter has recently released an update with these new filter settings in place, which is now available for download here. With the new filter settings in place, image spam mails are more easily detected, and filtered out for SPAMfighter users worldwide. Get the latest version of the SPAMfighter spam filter here.

SPAMfighter is Europe's leading spam filter developer. The Danish company is owned by the founders of Jubii.dk, Henrik Sørensen and Martin Thorborg, together with two programmers, Daniel Hjortholt and Martin Dyring. SPAMfighter employs 20 people and is based in Copenhagen. SPAMfighter is debt-free and is 100 per cent financed by income from the sale of the SPAMfighter client. Each day, SPAMfighter removes around 4 million spam messages from 5 million tested emails received by one million users in 209 countries/regions.

SPAMfighter draws its power from the fact that 1.4 million users report spam as they receive it, with a single click. Once several users have reported the same spam message, it is automatically filtered for all other users. The result is that 98 per cent of all spam is filtered out before it reaches any given user.

For more information, contact Martin Thorborg, SPAMfighter ApS, Rovsingsgade 88, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark. Phone: +45 7022 1551 Fax (Europe): +45 3323 0376 Fax (USA) +1 (347) 341-4657

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