Commtouch Reports October Spam Trends: The CAN-SPAM Compliance Scam

Business Wire, Nov 15, 2004

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Commtouch Software Ltd. (Nasdaq:CTCHC)

--Email messages made claims that they were complying with law when they were actually in violation

--Spam with political themes associated with the U.S. presidential election were employed to sell products

--171 countries sent spam in October vs. 166 month before

--52 countries hosted web sites referenced in spam message vs. 45 in September

Commtouch(R) (Nasdaq:CTCHC), the innovator of anti-spam solutions featuring Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD)(TM) technology, announced today that the Commtouch Spam Detection Center analyzed hundreds of millions of spam messages in the month of October 2004 and found that the business of spam is alive around the globe. China led the world in hosting 38.5% of the web sites that spammers reference in their spam messages, while the United States placed second at 30.6%. Approximately 2.55 million URLs were used in spam messages in October; with 99.2% of those URLs not used in spam messages the previous month.

In October, spam related to topics associated with the U.S. elections was prevalent. "The intriguing thing about the spam we saw was that it was apparently using politics to sell products and make money more than spreading political ideology or pitching a candidate," said Commtouch Executive Vice President Avner Amram.

Meanwhile while some political pundits were saying various politicians were misrepresenting themselves, spammers were attempting to represent their email messages as CAN-SPAM compliant when in fact they did not comply with numerous CAN-SPAM law requirements. "The Commtouch Spam Lab team found that numerous spam emails would contain images within the email stating that they are CAN-SPAM compliant," said Amram. "The fact is that if email 'feels and tastes' like spam, it probably is spam. The messages we saw purporting to be CAN-SPAM compliant didn't even come close to being CAN-SPAM compliant."

Commtouch's Lab Team tracked one American-based company sending emails with subject headers such as 'Earn your college degree', ''stop smoking in 7 days', 'let lenders compete for your business', 'Free IMAC G5 desktop computer', 'Product testers wanted', 'Claim your Free $250 gift card'. Commtouch analyzed 60 messages of the 'college degree' email and found the following tricks and CAN-SPAM violations:

--the 60 messages were sent from 12 different IP's

--the 60 messages had 7 different email addresses for the sender

--in the 60 messages there were 6 different 'subjects' for exactly the same email: College Degree Online!; Get your college degree online!; Go to college from home!; Online Education at its best!; We've found a school for you!; You can be smart!

Commtouch's reply-to-sender emails bounced back from all the senders. CAN-SPAM clearly requires a valid return address for an email message.

Origin of Spam: U.S. Still Leads the World

In the month of October, Commtouch detected that spam was sent from 171 countries, up from 166 in September. The volume of spam email originated primarily from sources in the following countries:

1. United States    42.50%

    2. South Korea      18.97%

    3. China            10.85%

    4. Japan             3.80%

    5. Canada            2.42%

    6. Brazil            2.15%

    7. Spain             2.01%

    8. France            1.54%

    9. UK                1.48%

   10. Taiwan            1.44%

   11. Hong Kong         1.41%

China is Still the Main Host of Spammer Websites

Most spam that arrives in email boxes contains a URL to a web site. Commtouch detected in October that facilities in 52 countries were hosting spammer web sites, compared to 45 countries in September. Facilities in China hosted almost 38.55% of websites referenced in spam email, versus the 67.90% share the month before.

Below are the top countries that hosted websites referenced in
spammer emails during October:

     1. China 38.55%

     2. United States 30.68%

     3. South Korea 21.47%

     4. Brazil 6.23%

     5. Slovakia 2.79%

     6. Russian Federation 0.13%

     7. Argentina 0.10%

     8. Canada 0.02%

     9. United Kingdom 0.007%

    10. Taiwan 0.005%

    11. Germany 0.005%

About Commtouch

Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CTCHC - News) is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam solutions, with an installed base of over 25 million users worldwide. Commtouch's mission is to protect and preserve the integrity of the world's most important communications tool -- email. The company's solutions, based on RPD(TM) - Recurrent Pattern Detection, reflect Commtouch's 13 years of experience developing messaging software. Commtouch's patented technologies are offered for OEM integration, and are also available as end-to-end enterprise solutions through channels and resellers. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel and has a subsidiary in Mountain View, CA. For more information, see: www.commtouch.com.

To learn more about Commtouch visit http://www.commtouch.com/. IDC recently wrote about RPD as a unique and potent approach to fighting spam in the firm's white paper titled, "Choosing the Best Technology to Fight Spam." http://www.commtouch.com/analysts_and_publications.shtml. Also see a recent report from Osterman Research, "Comparative Analysis of Anti-Spam Solutions," which provides an objective assessment of 23 leading anti-spam solutions: http://www.ostermanresearch.com/whitepapers/download11.htm or at http://www.commtouch.com/analysts_and_publications.shtml