How it Works
SureMessage is the simple and effective way to prevent spam and viruses from reaching your mailbox. You just sign up for the service and SureMessage takes care of the rest. You hardly need any technical knowledge, you don't install any server software, and you don't pay by volume. To top it all, SureMessage is backed by our unbeatable 60 day money-back guarantee. No worries!
Australia. China. The European Union. South Korea. United Kingdom. United States. All have invoked tough new laws to fight spam. Are they working?
The September 2004 issue of Consumer Reports confesses that 47% of its respondents say they're receiving more spam than ever before! The law has a role to play. But ultimately, it takes technology to beat technology.
At Clear Networks, we were just as frustrated as everyone else. We had our own problems with spam impacting our productivity and clogging our servers. That's why we use SureMessage. It worked so well for us we realised we could help a lot of other businesses by offering SureMessage as a simple yet powerful, no worries solution.
SureMessage is incredibly simple to use even though it is arguably one of the most sophisticated technologies fighting spam today. Every email is put through a barrage of six different spam filters and then either quarantined or sent on to your mailbox.
Features and Benefits
- Managed service saves money and worry
- No volume charges means no surprises
- Integrated spam and virus filtering
- Highly accurate six-stage spam filter
- Patent-pending sender trust ratings
- Quick and easy setup in under an hour
- User-level searchable spam quarantine
- 60 day 'no-risk' money-back guarantee
Frequently Asked Questions
We've been working hard answering your questions on the spam problem and on how we can solve it for you! Please take the time to read through the valuable information on these pages which will provide a lot of the answers you're probably looking for. And of course, if you have a question which is not in this section, please let us know so we can add it here.
You can no longer afford to ignore spam. Chances are, staff in your business are fighting a daily battle with spam in their inbox which is costing time, money and causing needless worry and fear. Here are some questions addressing the question of just how spam might adversely be impacting your business...
What is spam?
A commonly accepted definition for spam is 'unsolicited, bulk e-mail' (UBE) or 'unsolicited commercial email' (UCE). However, it is important to note that a message can be unsolicited (first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries etc.) or bulk e-mail (subscriber newsletters, discussion lists, information lists, etc.) and not be spam. In a corporate environment, it is crucial to ensure that important and legitimate e-mails are not blocked and that legitimate marketers are able to find their customers.
Is spam really a problem?
People have differing views on the definition of spam, but there is one fact that everyone agrees with: spam is on the rise.
Some observers say that spam now occupies 70% of all email traffic. Gartner puts the number at greater then 60% and rising.
Why Is spam a growing problem?
The crux of the problem is that there is little cost to the spammer, and every incentive to bombard as many addresses as possible. Spammers typically send e-mail to distribution lists in the millions, and therefore only need a minute percentage of users to respond to their offer in order to make spamming commercially viable.
However, with e-mail the cost for the sender is virtually nil as the costs of replication, transmission, and download are borne by the recipients either directly or indirectly.
What is the cost of spam?
US analyst Ferris Research attempted to quantify the annual cost of spam and concluded that it cost $8.9 billion for U.S. corporations, $2.5 billion for European businesses and another $500 million for U.S. and European service providers. According to the European Commission figures, spam cost businesses approximately $10 billion globally in 2001 and since that time spam volume has more than doubled. The Radicati Group, a US based analyst firm, published similar findings and predicted that this figure would rise tenfold by 2007.
What is the direct costs of spam on a business?
Delivering spam costs the enterprise in terms of both Internet bandwidth and disk storage. Once received, each unwanted message has to be stored until it is read and/or deleted by the user.
In many cases the e-mail remains in the deleted items folder on the network even after it has been discarded.
It is easy to underestimate the bandwidth costs associated with spam delivered to the enterprise: If 50% of a company's network traffic is e-mail and 50% of that email is spam (a conservative figure - Gartner estimates that it could be up to 80%) then it follows that 25% of that company's overall bandwidth cost is being used solely to download spam.
Nortel Networks estimates that each spam message received costs the company $1. Although the cost of a single spam message to an individual user is small, the aggregate cost of spam messages directed at business today is becoming a board-level concern.
In a direct example, Clear Networks, calculated the direct cost of spam on their business at a huge $1,200 per month in traffic costs alone.
In another example, a business with several hundred email accounts had their email filtered and was able to release an additional 1Mb/s of bandwidth.
What is the Indirect costs of spam on a business?
Spam has a negative effect on employee productivity throughout the enterprise. For e-mail administrators, their time is increasingly becoming focused on spam; how to either prevent it from entering the enterprise, or how to manage it when it does. For the end user, managing and deleting unwanted messages is both frustrating and time-consuming. It is estimated that the average end user receives 4 - 10 unwanted e-mails per day, and that previewing or opening and deleting these takes an average of 10 seconds per message.
Research by Forester Research showed that employees get distracted by spam. Of those surveyed:
- 28% said they responded to spam;
- 46% stated that they had accidentally deleted or overlooked legitimate emails.
- The effect on IT infrastructure cannot be understated. IT Administrators are stretched in maintaining virus updates - yet still we get Virus outbreaks!
The effect on producitivity of already stated bandwidth being soaked up by unwanted emails is incalculable - as corporate users are slowed in performing their tasks, or a company has to pay for additional bandwidth.
Further business risks... Spam: the legal threat
Much spam is pornographic in nature and wholly inappropriate for the workplace. Legal experts in the US now believe that where workers have complained about the e-mail content they are receiving, employers have a legal exposure if they cannot demonstrate that they are taking steps to address the issue. Spam has been cited in a number of sexual harassment laws suits where employees claim that their employer's lack of response to their complaints about receiving offensive material via the corporate mail network is indicative of a broader issue. Many believe that the UK will follow suit. Today employers increasingly recognise that they have a 'duty of care' to protect staff from offensive e-mail messages. Employing suitable filtering technology demonstrates that a company is taking reasonable steps to protect its employees.
But won't Anti-Spam legislation stop Spam?
Dealing with spammers will not only require international cooperation, but collaboration between academia, business and government parties. The problem with passing anti-spam laws in isolation is that spammers simply give their business to ISPs in other, less regulated, countries. For example, there have been two anti-spam bills and 29 instances of state legislation in the US, 19 European have enacted relevant national and EU legislation, and there has been national legislation in at least seven other countries. Despite this, the problem of spam is growing faster than ever before.
In Australia the SpamAct has seen a number of Australian based spaming operations move off-shore, however the amount of spam being received from indicative reports continues unabated. An example is shown here from the US experience, early reports from Australia appear to have the same results.
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