Staying one step ahead of spammers Final Edition

• Published in: The Ottawa citizen (1986)
• Main Author: Woolhouse, Keith
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa, Ont Postmedia Network Inc 11.03.2004
• Subjects: Skoll, David
• ISSN: 0839-3222

There are three reply codes: One is a simple acceptance, another declines the e-mail permanently and the third says try again later. CanIt-PRO keeps an e-mail on a sender's server until it has been proven that it is not spam. "As far as I know, our software is the only one that keeps it on the sending site until it has been approved," says Mr. [David Skoll]. The software is programmed to detect suspect spam and define it according to a point system. An e-mail offering a penis enlargement on Roaring Penguin's server was correctly identified as spam, but not solely on the basis of the subject matter because the e-mail could have been from a medical practitioner. The telltale marks that exposed it as spam was that 80 per cent of the text was in HTML (hypertext markup language), the fonts were in blue and red and oversize and there were 15 suspect words that have all the earmarks of spam. They included: gain, want, pills and tests. The e-mail was automatically rejected. Mr. Skoll founded Roaring Penguin in 1999. CanIt-PRO is the newest version intended for large enterprises, campuses and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It emerged from MIMEDefang, an anti-spam software program Mr. Skoll wrote for a client a couple of years back. He kept the rights to it and from that spun off the basic CanIt program.