Neowin.net - Cloudmark SpamNet here for Outlook Express

Cloudmark SpamNet here for Outlook Express

Posted by Steven Parker on 09 January 2004 - 09:57 · 13 comments & 418 views

I'm surprised this one never made the news, so maybe I'm doing a few people a favor today by posting it now. Cloudmark has finally released an Outlook Express version of their community spam-fighting tool "Cloudmark SpamNet" this program integrates with Outlook Express creating both a spam "firewall" and seamless way to block spam that does slip through. It's better explained at the site:

Source: Collaborative SpamFighting

This product is currently a "free beta" meaning you can participate and benefit from the network but as we saw with the Cloudmark SpamNet beta for Outlook it became subscription based soon after.

Download: Cloudmark SpamNet for Outlook Express (Outlook version requires subscription)

View: Subscription Cost (OE version is free for the duration of the beta)

News source: Cloudmark

Opponents of the law are asking the judge to strike down the law because it is "well-intentioned but technologically misguided." During three days of sometimes heated arguments in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology, the attorney general's procedure for identifying and blocking offending sites was attacked.

The attorney general's staff searched the Internet for child pornography and also set up a Web page that allowed Pennsylvania residents to report instances of child pornography.

The office then "sent about 500 informal notices to the ISPs through whose services the offending material had been accessed, asking the ISPs to disable their subscribers' access to the sites. The ISPs generally wrote in response that they had complied with the notice," the attorney general's office said in a brief.

After receiving notice, an ISP has five days to block users' access to the website. Failure to comply carries fines of up to $30,000 and jail terms of up to seven years.

But attorneys for the CDT argued that over 1 million websites that do not contain child pornography have also been blocked since the attorney general's office started sending out notices to ISPs in April 2002.

"It's not as simple as telling an ISP to stop people from accessing www.zzz.com. Each domain name can have several IP addresses attached to it and each upper level domain name can have hundreds of subdomains below it," said networking consultant Mike Sweeney. "It would equivalent of nuking a city block when all you needed was the flyswatter to kill the fly.

"The idea of Pennsylvania blocking sites was a misguided attempt of censorship by clueless public service officials," Sweeney added. "If they had taken the time to talk to knowledgeable technical people, all of this would have been explained at some level and the state of Pennsylvania would have been spared the embarrassment of looking like a bunch luddites who are technically inept. Trying to block sites this way is doomed to failure."

Sean Connolly, spokesman for acting state Attorney General Jerry Pappert, said that that the technology exists to allow ISPs to block only the specific site housing the pornography. There is also technology to block the site only from Pennsylvania state residents, although Connolly admitted that such solutions are complex and costly to implement.

Some ISPs, including America Online, Verizon and Worldcom, claimed in depositions that, given technical issues and the time frame they were given to comply with the attorney general's request, they had no choice but to block the access to sites that did not contain child pornography. In some cases, these blocks denied access to the sites for all North American subscribers.

"The attorney general cannot disavow responsibility for the blocking of more than 1 million entirely innocent websites by pointing fingers at the ISPs," argued John B. Morris, an attorney for the Center for Democracy & Technology.

"He seeks to blame the ISPs' decisions to use IP and DNS filtering as the cause of the massive overblocking of websites, not any action of the state. But the blocking of those sites is a direct result of ISPs' attempts to comply with the statutory scheme enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature and the informal notice scheme developed by the attorney general."

The law in question reads in part: "An Internet service provider shall remove or disable access to child pornography items residing on or accessible through its service in a manner accessible to persons located within this Commonwealth within five business days of when the Internet service provider is notified by the Attorney General pursuant to § 7628 (relating to notification procedure) that child pornography items reside on or are accessible through its service."

"From reading that law, It appears that the Pennsylvania district attorney has been anointed prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner," said attorney Harvey Jacobs, who specializes in Internet law.

"I didn't see any provision for judicial determination of whether certain website content is kiddie porn. I did not see any due process procedures for website owners to challenge the determinations," Jacobs said.

Arguments in the case are expected to conclude on Friday. U.S. District Judge Jan E. Dubois, who is hearing the case, is then expected to rule within a week or two. Some legal experts worry that if the Pennsylvania law is allowed to stand it could pave the way for other states to pass similar laws, blocking access to sites that the states deem illegal or immoral.

"While no civilized human being could defend child pornography, it's important to look at the big picture here," Morris said.

"There are better ways to stop child pornographers than blocking access to their sites and pretending they aren't there ... ways that solve the problem without creating an avalanche of censorship and technology issues."

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(1 reply) #1 Posted by Quick Reply on 09 Jan 2004 - 10:08: i don't want to sound like a troll, so I'll say it in these words: Outlook Express is a great program if you havn't trialed and compared it to another email client that is far superior: for instance Outlook 2003 or Thunderbird 0.4... There are others worthy too.

(3 replies) #2 Posted by spampalupdate on 09 Jan 2004 - 10:22: Try these instead:

SpamPal: www.spampal.org
K9: http://keir.net/k9.html
Spamihilator: http://www.spamihilator.com/index2.php?lang=en

(2 replies) #3 Posted by pctuk on 09 Jan 2004 - 11:14: I remember when this was first released for Outlook. Many loyal beta testers had spent a lot of time on their forums discussing bugs, and were disappointed when SpamNet suddenly announced they would charge as soon as the product made final. There had been no hint of this whilst the beta testers were busily helping the company improve the product.

#4 Posted by Mr magoo on 09 Jan 2004 - 11:58: Pctuk - agreed. Absolute joke how they built up a spam database, and then literally said right, use the crappy final pre-beta releases, or pay up.

this is one beta that i wont be testing for.

(1 reply) #5 Posted by Mr. Black on 09 Jan 2004 - 13:14: Even though they did the thing with telling everyone they would charge for it in final (and we built their database for them), and I was a beta tester who was also upset, I bit the bullet because I liked the product, and I must say, this product is EXCELLENT.

It catches practically ALL spam, and deletes it. For the few that may slip thru, all you have to do is press "Block" and it's blocked for everyone.

Great product - I give it 4 stars.

#6 Posted by tomaras on 10 Jan 2004 - 20:06: I used spamnet for the last year or more. I've replaced it with the junk mail filter in the new MS Outlook 2003 which really does a great job. Though spamnet served me well, the new Outlook filter doesn't need to run as a plugin and adds no overhead to my system.

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