Startup Unveils Reputation-Based Spam Fighter

NEW YORK -- Interop New York -- Anti-spam vendors have tried blacklists and whitelists, and we're still getting spam. Now a new vendor is offering a different approach.

Abaca Technology Corp. here this week is demonstrating a new product, the Email Protection Gateway, that promises to achieve a 99 percent spam catch rate, with less than one false positive in every 20,000 emails.

The new appliance is built around ReceiverNet, a patent-pending algorithm that uses receivers' reputations to sort legitimate messages from spam.

"ReceiverNet operates on the principle that an email message is more likely to be legitimate if it is sent to recipients who typically receive a low percentage of spam," says Steve Kirsch, chairman, founder, and CEO of Abaca, who previously founded Frame Technology and Infoseek.

"Conversely, an email message is more likely to be spam when it is sent to recipients who typically receive a high percentage of spam," Kirsch says. "ReceiverNet rates messages based on each user's overall ratio of legitimate messages to spam messages."

The gateway, which is targeted at small and medium-sized businesses, starts at $1,495.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading