outlook express spam filter

Companies looking for less expensive alternatives to Microsoft Exchange and IBM Domino may want to check out Stalker Software's CommuniGate Pro. Last month, the company rolled out version 4.3 of the product, which brings new encryption and collaboration capabilities. In about a month, Stalker hopes to release the beta of version 5.0, which will bring additional voice over IP (VoIP) and "rich media" conferencing capabilities.

Stalker's CommuniGate Pro covers all the bases when it comes to messaging and groupware, and offers some cutting-edge functionality, too. The software supports the basic SMTP, POP3, and IMAP e-mail standards, features a MAPI connector (for using the CommuniGate Pro server in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook clients), works with an array of major anti-spam and anti-virus products, and runs on more operating systems than you care to shake a stick at, including Windows Server 2003.
Beyond e-mail, Stalker offers add-ons for turning CommuniGate Pro into a groupware server, enabling users to share contact information and collaborate on their calendars. Stalker also sells software that turns CommuniGate Pro into a hub for voice, video, and instant messaging, via the session initiation protocol (SIP). Connecting SIP-enabled devices, such as VoIP phones and PDAs, is an area where Stalker is dedicating a lot of its development energy for version 5.0.
CommuniGate Pro version 4.3, which became available in early May, also includes new SIP features. The release included a new Presence Server component that enables it to communicate with multiple SIP clients, and resolves a common problem that occurs when a single user has more than one SIP device, such as desktop phone and a soft client on his PC.
Having multiple SIP-enabled devices can lead to conflicts when they try to announce their user's presence simultaneously. Stalker says it has addressed the issue by basing its presence functionality on two standards: SIMPLE, which is short for SIP for Instant Messaging, and XCAP (or XML Configuration Access Protocol) standards. Together these protocols will help CommuniGate Pro maintain server-based information about SIP user agents, Stalker says.
CommuniGate Pro version 4.3 also makes it easier for users to encrypt their e-mail, while still complying with "key escrow" laws that require some businesses, government organizations, and hosting companies to enable encrypted e-mail to be intercepted by law-enforcement organizations. The new software lets users encrypt some or all of their e-mail, while designating an escrow key holder that will have access to the encrypted email.
The new encryption capability was implemented through a standard S/MIME public key infrastructure (PKI), and works with Stalker's Web client interface, with Outlook using the CommuniGate Pro MAPI client, and other e-mail clients, including Microsoft's Outlook Express, Entourage and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Originally slated for availability in early March, CommuniGate Pro 4.3 was delayed, and became available in early May. CommuniGate Pro version 5.0, which Stalker originally planned to ship in the early spring, has also been delayed, and now the beta of that product should become available towards the end of June or the beginning of July.

Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), a leading provider of email and file transfer security solutions, announced today that MedReview Inc., a leader in medical reviews and programs for prospective, concurrent and retrospective monitoring, has implemented the Tumbleweed MailGate Email Firewall(TM) and Secure Messenger(TM) products to protect critical information, meet regulatory compliance requirements, and significantly reduce IT costs.
MedReview, a subsidiary of the New York County Health Services Review Organization (NYCHSRO) which was established in 1974 as one of the first physicians' peer review organizations in the United States, provides its clients with guaranteed cost-effective case management and utilization analysis approaches that can assist them in developing or negotiating more cost-efficient benefit plan strategies. As businesses like MedReview aggressively expand the use of email to help streamline communications and cut costs, the privacy and security of personal and confidential information shared via email is a top concern. This concern, combined with regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and Sarbanes-Oxley, imposes email security and management requirements which most email systems don't meet.
To address regulatory issues and ensure client privacy, MedReview implemented the Tumbleweed's MailGate Email Firewall and Secure Messenger solutions to protect, filter and secure email traffic throughout the organization's communications network. MailGate Email Firewall supports and protects more than 300 email users and scans over 1 million messages a month, blocking spam and viruses before they reach the email server.
"HIPAA was a real challenge, but with Tumbleweed there was no need for additional training. Tumbleweed integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook, so people just sent their emails," said Vlad Safyanovskiy, senior technology officer of MedReview.
MailGate Secure Messenger also meets high security requirements by encrypting the more than 2,500 outgoing messages per month to address PHI-related concerns. MedReview now relies on Tumbleweed to inspect every incoming and outgoing email communication to detect and disinfect potentially damaging messages. As an added benefit, the Tumbleweed solutions also protect MedReview against worms, Trojan horses and other malicious threats in all major file types, including mobile code and compressed file formats.
"We understand that the benefits of fully utilizing email within the healthcare industry carry significant risks if the traffic is not properly secured and managed. We've optimized our MailGate solutions for highly confidential, mission-critical applications to ensure that our customers meet both regulatory requirements and their user's expectations," said Joe Fisher, VP of Marketing, Tumbleweed Communications. "As a leader in the healthcare industry, MedReview turned to the leader in email security to provide them with the most reliable, customizable and cost-effective email solution to address not only security but also compliance related issues."
About Tumbleweed MailGate Email Firewall
Tumbleweed MailGate Email Firewall has been recognized as having the best email security product functionality by META Group, and was rated the #1 enterprise software solution for fighting spam, according to Network World (http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0915spam.html). Tumbleweed MailGate Email Firewall protects, filters and secures email traffic at the Internet gateway with an integrated set of anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-hacker, content filtering, email relay and encrypted messaging capabilities -- minimizing email communications risks and reducing email management costs. Tumbleweed MailGate Email Firewall is used by more than 650 of the world's largest, most demanding messaging infrastructures, and is available in both appliance and software editions.
About Tumbleweed's Secure Messenger
MailGate Secure Messenger(TM), now in its sixth generation, is the leading software solution for securing email communications. Currently deployed at some of the most demanding enterprises in the Global 2000, MailGate Secure Messenger enables organizations to meet their own unique security needs -- from compliance with government privacy regulations in Healthcare (HIPAA) and Financial Services (GLBA) to enforcement of corporate policies (SOX) and protection of intellectual property.
Secure Messenger works with the MailGate Email Firewall to inspect all outbound email at the network gateway. Based on policies that your organization defines, it automatically identifies violations based on the content of the email, and redirects suspect messages to a secure, encrypted channel for further action. This perimeter-based design ensures that all users comply with enterprise privacy and security policies all the time -- without the need to install software on every desktop.
About MedReview Inc.
MedReview is a subsidiary of New York County Health Services Review Organization (NYCHSRO), which was established in 1974 in New York State as one of the first physicians' peer review organizations in the United States. The company's goals were then, and continue to be, improvements in the quality, appropriateness, and cost-effectiveness of health care services.
About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Tumbleweed provides security solutions for email protection, file transfers, and identity validation that allow organizations to safely conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three comprehensive product suites: MailGate, SecureTransport, and Validation Authority. MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses, and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption, and routing. SecureTransport enables business to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. The Validation Authority is the world-leading solution for determining the validity of digital certificates. Tumbleweed's enterprise and government customers include ABN Amro, Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), St. Luke's Episcopal Healthcare System, the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of Defense, and all four branches of the US Armed Forces. Tumbleweed was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. For additional information about Tumbleweed go to www.tumbleweed.com or call 650-216-2000.
Safe Harbor Statement
Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on plans and expectations as of the date of the press release, and that a number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the guidance given at this time. These factors are described in the Safe Harbor statement below.
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to Tumbleweed products and Tumbleweed's Healthcare business. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed's Form 10-K filed March 16, 2005 and Form 10-Q filed May 10, 2005.
Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release, which represents the Company's expectations only as of the date of this release and should not be viewed as a statement about the Company's expectations after such date. Although this release may remain available on the Company's website or elsewhere, its continued availability does not indicate that the Company is reaffirming or confirming any of the information contained herein.

It starts taking its toll long before it lands in your inbox. First, spammers employ spyware and viruses to hijack home and office computers for use as unwitting relays for junk e-mail. Then your Internet provider must spend time and money running filters, lest its computers be swamped.
The junk e-mail that inevitably leaks through wastes your time and bandwidth as you wait for each message to download. Almost all of it insults your intelligence and good sense; spam assumes we're drug-addicted, money-grubbing, porn-addled fools ready to click on any stupid offer.
And the single worst thing about spam? Enough recipients do click on those stupid offers to keep spammers in business.
Nobody has found a technological fix for spam. The Internet's design puts a priority on the free flow of data. Internet providers, too many of which still whore themselves out to spammers, and spammers' own cockroach-like tenacity all but ensure there won't be.
Because the Internet spans the world, laws aren't likely to solve this problem either, although I am always delighted to see spammers being litigated into poverty, fined into bankruptcy or imprisoned until senility sets in.
Spam can, however, be managed. You can make your e-mail address a smaller target for spammers, and you can shunt aside a healthy chunk of the spam that does find you.
If you can keep your address off spammers' lists, you will get little or no junk e-mail. So never post your e-mail address on any public spot on the Web, and be choosy about giving it to strangers or companies.
Instead, create a second, throwaway account at any of the free Web-mail services, such as Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Gmail, and use that for online commerce. Most Web sites won't share your address with the world - but a few might, so why chance it?
This method will not, however, defeat a dictionary attack, in which spammers send messages to randomly chosen names at popular Internet providers. Having an address with an unusual spelling or at a lesser-known provider can reduce vulnerability.
When spam arrives, never respond to it. And make sure your mail software isn't doing that for you: If it displays a picture in a spam message, it often does so by downloading the image from the spammer's Web site, which tells the sender you just read the spam.
Current releases of the major mail programs - Microsoft's Outlook Express and Outlook, Apple's Mail, Qualcomm's Eudora and Mozilla's Thunderbird - won't display pictures in mail from strangers. But older versions will, so upgrade now.
You can try forwarding your spam to the authorities: Send a copy to the Federal Trade Commission at spam(at)uce.gov, or via the link at www.ftc.gov/spam. Forwarding another to the "abuse" address of the Internet provider that relayed the message (abuse(at)aol.com, for example) is also smart. But to do that right, you'll need to use your mail program's "show full headers" option, which is often hidden.
You'd think that writing a program to delete spam would be easy, since even an Internet beginner can tell spam from real mail. But that hasn't happened - yet another way in which the computer can't match the human brain.
Your Internet provider's spam filtering will usually sweep the worst offenders out of sight, but some adopt an excessively strict policy that wrongly tags innocent e-mails as spam. Last winter, for example, Verizon's filtering suddenly began flushing away many legitimate e-mails sent from parts of Europe and Asia.
If you use your own mail program instead of a Web interface such as Hotmail or Yahoo, you can run your own spam filters. The best learn from your use, watching what mail you label as spam and adjusting their screening to match. Mozilla Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org) and Apple's Mail, both free, include this type of filter, as does the $50 edition of Qualcomm's Eudora (www.eudora.com).
Microsoft's Outlook 2003, by contrast, has a non-learning spam filter, while its free Outlook Express includes no spam block.
You can add a learning filter to either program with various add-ons; some, such as POPFile (popfile.sourceforge.net) and SpamPal (www.spampal.org), are free but may require tricky configuration; others, such as SpamBully (www.spambully.com) cost money.
A more stringent defense, "challenge-response" filtering, requires would-be correspondents to pass a simple test online that a bulk mailer can't or won't bother to complete - usually, visiting a Web page and typing in letters shown in an image. Some Internet providers - notably, EarthLink — and such add-on software as ChoiceMail (www.digiportal.com) and SpamArrest (www.spamarrest.com) offer it.
But although these systems wave through mail from people in your address book, other legitimate senders must perform extra work. Challenge-response has not been widely adopted.
All of these techniques can only treat spam. A cure will have to be economic: When no money can be made from spam, nobody will send it. Filters, lawsuits and fines can raise the costs of sending junk e-mail, but there's still money to be made by defrauding the gullible.