Anti Spam - SpamUnit

Recently, CAUCE - the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email - saw a merger of its two North American offices. In an attempt to consolidate antispam measures, CAUCE US and CAUCE Canada have merged to form CAUCE North America.

CAUCE US, founded by Scott Hazen Mueller back in 1997, was dedicated to the eradication of spam both in the US and internationally. By merging with its Canadian sister arm, the organisation now hopes to be more effective in dealing with junk spam, which is very much an international problem.

CAUCE acts as an advocacy group for internet consumers who want to get rid of spam. It offers advice regarding anti spam software, spam firewalls and more, but its primary function is to fight against spam in the courts, in the hope of eliminating spam through Congress and state laws. Neil Schwartzman of the former Canadian bureau said, “CAUCE’s mission has always been about making the Internet safe for users, and promoting responsible Internet commerce,” showing that while CAUCE remains in favour of email marketing, it takes spam removal and spam filtering services very seriously.

See more: www.cauce.org for details of the merger and for a list of spam FAQs, as well as information on how to deal with spam.

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As spam gangs become more organised, antispam organisations such as Spamhaus are under greater threat. DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks are becoming increasingly common as spammers look to fight back against those who would publicise their IP addresses and email addresses so that users can block spam in their mail clients. Spamhaus, which provides information to be used with the Outlook Express and Outlook spam filter, among others, were rendered inaccessible by these attacks. The SURBL (Spam URL Real-time Block List) and URIBL (Black List) were briefly taken down. Thankfully, they were brought back up before too long and can be accessed at http://www.spamhaus.org.

Also attacked was the Rules Emporium, which provides rulesets for SpamAssassin, a noted anti-spam tool. By limiting access to the site, spammers hoped to achieve two things: firstly, to intimidate the webmasters, and secondly to restrict access to email spam filtering resources in general. The site is back up and can be accessed at: http://www.rulesemporium.com if you want to learn more about how spam tools and spam filtering services work.

Numerous other organizations, both related to spam and law enforcement, have been under attack as well, but the general rule is that, the higher-profile a company or group is, the more risk they run.

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Barracuda Networks, Inc., famed manufacturers of the Barracuda spam firewall, have hit back at the DOS (denial of service) spammers who recently hit anti-spamlist-keepers Spamhaus. Barracuda Spam Firewall users utilise spam black lists, such as those provided by Spamhaus, to power their spam hardware solutions. The spam list contains blacklisted IPs and email addresses, which the firewall then filters out before spam messages can reach your inbox. However, when Spamhaus was rendered inaccessible by DOS attacks, Barracuda retained its effectiveness: this is because it combines spam lists with 11 other defence layers, including its own profiling algorithims and the Energize Updates service, a subscription-based service that comes into play before external lists such as those provided by Spamhaus are employed. The company also pointed out that the virus worm used to carry out the DOS attacks was quickly blocked by Energize Update, which is rolled out to all subscribing Barracuda Spam Firewall users. Many botnet and DOS attacks are spread via viruses like these, and the vast majority of attempted virus attacks take place via email.

Barracuda, often used by large businesses, is thus a choice for those who need 100% guaranteed uptime on their spam list solutions, although most home users may find it excessive.

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