Email Security Threats Posed by Phishing Scams, Fraud and Spam

According to a recent study by the Center for Excellence in Service at Maryland's business school, time wasted deleting spam is estimated to cost American businesses $21.6 billion per year, based on average U.S. wages. The random survey of 1,000 U.S. adults in November 2004 found that individuals received an average of 18.5 spam messages a day and spent an average of 2.8 minutes per day deleting spam.

Even more troubling, spam messages are becoming increasingly costly and dangerous. Phishing scams, which often result in identity-theft and financial losses by tricking recipients into providing confidential personal information, are growing at the rate of about 50 percent each month, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Gartner Group recently surveyed 5,000 adult internet users and estimated that 30 million US users have experienced a phishing attack, and an additional 27 million believe they have been exposed to a phishing attack. By their estimates, 1.8 million U.S. adults lost $1.2 billion due to phishing scams last year.

Recent developments foreshadow a bleak outlook. With the rapid adoption of broadband internet access, spammers have unleashed viruses and worms that compromise millions of computers that are always connected to the Iinternet. These "zombies" are used to unleash spam messages. The real-time black lists that have historically been able to identify and block the sources of high volumes of spam are simply unable to block messages sent by these zombies because legitimate messages and spam messages are sent from the same email servers.

Because phishing scams and other forged email messages are practically indistinguishable from genuine messages sent by well-known companies, spam filters that rely primarily on content analysis are poorly suited to protecting individuals and businesses from forged messages that are practically identical to legitimate email.

CA Anti-Spam Provides the Best Protection Available Against Phishing Scams and Fraud

Rather than attempting to block email using content analysis techniques, CA® Anti-Spam controls access to an individual's inbox by screening the identities of email senders. If the sender of a message is a friend, relative, business associate, service provider or someone else the recipient recognizes, their messages are of interest. By allowing only messages from approved senders to reach the inbox, CA Anti-Spam can completely eliminate spam from an individual's inbox, together with the interruptions such messages create throughout the day.

Most email security threats and scams, in particular dangerous messages that lead to identity theft and financial losses, are sent by people you don't know. CA Anti-Spam's identity-based approach for blocking spam from people you don't know keeps these types of messages out of your inbox. CA Anti-Spam is not a substitute for antivirus, firewall, and anti-spyware - all of which help protect your computer from a variety of security threats. But, by quarantining email messages from people you don't know, CA Anti-Spam can keep you safe from most email threats. CA Anti-Spam now offers the best possible protection from phishing attacks and other forms of email fraud by automatically authenticating inbound email messages and showing you the results of the authentication tests. This information is absolutely essential in identifying dangerous forgeries sent by scammers pretending to be well-known companies.

CA Anti-Spam places a visual stamp on every message that has been authenticated. Using a sender authentication framework that supports all of the industry-standard authentication schemes (e.g., SPF and Yahoo! Domain Keys, etc.), CA Anti-Spam determines whether each message was received from a computer that the message sender uses to send outbound messages using information that is securely published by the message senders.

By only allowing messages into your inbox from people you know, CA Anti-Spam helps you more easily communicate with the people you know. By providing you with authentication results, CA Anti-Spam lets you know who you're dealing with.

CA Anti-Spam Makes Email Better

CA Anti-Spam places all messages from unknown senders into a quarantine folder where they can be reviewed at a convenient time. As individuals review the quarantined messages, new email addresses from approved messages are automatically added to the list of approved senders. Importantly, individuals can easily understand why any message was placed in the quarantine and how they can prevent it from being quarantined in the future. Simply, a message is quarantined because a sender is not an approved sender; authorizing the message adds the sender to the list of approved senders and that sender's messages would never be quarantined again.

Periodically at convenient times, CA Anti-Spam provides a reminder if new messages have been quarantined. A special quarantine review panel allows individuals to quickly scan messages from unknown senders, identify any that are legitimate, and dismiss the remaining messages, which will later be purged automatically after a specified aging period.

To allow individuals to instantly find a legitimate email message that has been quarantined, CA Anti-Spam provides an integrated email search feature. Searching by keyword or name instantly returns messages of interest that are stored in your mail folders. More generally, CA Anti-Spam automatically keeps an index of the complete contents of Outlook and Outlook Express (e.g., email messages, attachments, contacts, appointments, tasks, etc.) continuously up-to-date, making it possible to reliably find anything of interest - instantly.

Stopping The Spam Problem

CA Anti-Spam integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express to successfully block phishing scams, forged messages and spam from making its way to the inbox. Product features and benefits include:

Protects Against Phishing Scams and Email Fraud	CA Anti-Spam authenticates email senders to visually warn recipients when messages are potentially dangerous forgeries.
Eliminates 100% of spam from your inbox	Only messages from individuals on the list of approved senders are delivered to the inbox. All other messages are quarantined in the CA Anti-Spam folder. Without relying on complicated configuration and training, CA Anti-Spam is the most easy-to-use, easy-to-understand, effective solution for stopping spam.
Searches Outlook and Outlook Express instantly	CA Anti-Spam can create a comprehensive search index of the information stored in Outlook and Outlook Express to provide complete, reliable, up-to-date search results - instantly.
Automatically builds and maintains a personal list of approved senders	Upon installation, CA Anti-Spam automatically scans all Outlook folders to compile the list of approved senders. As messages are blocked, approved or composed, email addresses are automatically added or removed from the list of approved senders.
New message alerts only occur for messages from approved senders	Individuals can also choose to have quarantined messages automatically marked as read to remove the potential distraction of inbound spam.
Quarantine reminders occur at convenient times	Individuals can be reminded at convenient times when quarantined messages need to be reviewed.
Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express	CA Anti-Spam works seamlessly within these email programs, providing an integrated toolbar, quarantined message folder and spam filtering as messages are received. Block and Approve buttons allow senders of messages to be added or removed as approved senders.
CA Anti-Spam is software, not a service	Benefits of CA Anti-Spam's approach include security, privacy and independence from third party services that might impact reliable delivery of email.
Automated software updates	Users are automatically notified when new updates are available for download and installation.