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16 Oct 2006
Panda Software has joined the small but growing throng of security firms making the analogous connection between water supply and the quality of broadband connections.
"Comparisons can be made between the services offered by water companies and those provided by ISPs," said the latest statement from Panda.
"Whereas the water companies are required to provide drinkable water, the ISPs are not subject to the equivalent demands."
The argument is that ISPs should filter email for malware before it reaches subscribers' inboxes.
Email filtering can be much more aggressive at the so-called 'cloud' level before it arrives at consumers' computers, because malware often originates from known 'bad sectors' of the internet.
MessageLabs has been banging this drum for a few weeks, and BT announced last week that it is installing spam filters.
These will be used to 'clean' its broadband supply and help subscribers who have unwittingly become components of botnets to sanitise their PCs.
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Do you agree?
False positives
While this sounds like a good plan the issue I worry about is false positives - real mail being classed as spam. I have recently had two periods where my domain has been forged by spammers so the mail looks like it comes from a genuine person. This resulting in my domain being blacklisted by one of the spam databases and mail getting bounced or deleted. Despite continued pressure on my ISP to solve this they are mostly powerless. Auto purging of spam at source need much better analytics to trap real spam and let genuine mail through. There needs to be much more focus on use of security certificates to better identify genuine mail from "unsigned" mail and the ISP's need to start considering this in their filters.
Posted by: Nigel Wheatley 16 Oct 2006
Make the spammers pay
I would say that 90% of my email is spam. I just do not understand why email is sent to my mailbox where the sent-to-email address is not even my email address and the ISPs must be able to identify identical emails flooding the network. If Amazon wishes to mail everybody then they should pay the ISPs to get the message through all other "repeats" should be blocked. I cannot believe that all this spam is that difficult to stop!
Posted by: Andy 16 Oct 2006