Commtouch claims to have beaten image-based spam

Commtouch president Amir Lev: The last two months have seen a marked rise in the volume of spam containing images only.

Spam messages can usually be identified by formats appearing in texts or links. Commtouch Software Ltd. (Nasdaq: CTCH) has now developed a technology that will also enable the identification of spam that appears in the form of images.

Spammers are becoming ever more sophisticated and readers will no doubt be aware of this through the mail delivered to their personal email addresses. Most of the existing anti-spam solutions intercept mail by identifying specific texts, web sites, or standardized formats. But what happens when the spam is in the form of an image that cannot be detected by software analysis tools?

Commtouch announced today that it has developed a new defense against spam containing images only - unsolicited email with pictures, but no text or web hyperlinks. An image can contain nothing but text but since it is an image it cannot be analyzed by the usual anti-spam tools. Users often receive, for example, adverts recommending the acquisition of stocks that are about to soar. The text analyzing the stock is often contained in an image format.

Commtouch president and chief technology officer Amir Lev said that over the past several months, through processing billions of email messages, the company identified an increase in this particular subset of spam, containing images only, and that it would begin offering its new solution to its OEM partners and enterprise customers. Commtouch's patented Recurrent Pattern Detection technology uses advanced algorithmic processes to match recurrent patterns across similar messages, regardless of the content or language of the message, and regardless of variations in the messages.

Commtouch has a market cap on Nasdaq of $75 million.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on May 15, 2006

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

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