Napster solution to spam war

A start-up from San Francisco is taking spam-blocking down the Napster route with its free Outlook plug-in.

The Cloudmark P2P software, called SpamNet, enables people to block email from their inboxes which they consider to be spam.

With a click of the 'block' button, users can forward an offending email to Cloudmark's databases where "truth evaluation" technology judges how trustworthy the user is. Criteria such as length of time the user has been on the network and how accurate their past judgements have been are used to decide whether a filter will be established. If the email is adjudged to be spam it is then blocked from all members' inboxes.

But rival spam-blocking specialist Brightmail isn't convinced this method for deciding which emails are spam is completely reliable. There is always the possibility users will want to block messages that are unwanted though not necessarily spam.

Gert Veendal, director of sales EMEA for Brightmail, said: "The system relies on the quality of people replying to it. Because it's an open network, untrustworthy individuals have access to it and it's therefore open to abuse, which I think is a weak point for the solution."

Brightmail's technology operations, which are also based in San Francisco use automated software to check for certain characteristics to decide whether a message is spam. For occasions when the nature of the message is unclear, Brightmail staff make the decision.

Veendal claims the combination of its technology and what he describes as "highly trained" individuals gives his company the edge. However, he did add: "Who am I to say we never get it wrong?"