eCorner signs up Cloudmark anti-spam

Online storefront and payments technology provider eCorner has signed up as direct distributor for Cloudmark anti-spam software in Australia and New Zealand.

John Debrincat, managing director at eCorner, said Cloudmark had built a product proving successful overseas -- in North America and Europe -- against spam.

"We do a solution for organisations that want to build websites to sell online," he said. "We do get a lot of requests from our customers where [spam] is clogging up their email."

eCorner boasted customers like Dick Smith Electronics, Tandy and Weight Watchers. Many had ongoing problems with spam but few available applications were focused on dealing with spam, Debrincat said.

While many leading applications included anti-spam software, often the results weren't quite what was required. eCorner decided to go out to find something specifically targeting spam reduction, he said.

eCorner spent a lot of time comparing different products before settling on Cloudmark, Debrincat said.

"They have built a new type of technology. They have created a database that anyone contributes to using Cloudmark, and it gives a 98 percent success rate in terms of their screening process," he said.

Debrincat said it generated a "fingerprint" of spam, that it sent out to the Cloudmark service. "It kind of goes through the message and creates, using its own technology, a coded view of what that message looks like," he said.

Cloudmark sent its own message back to the desktop, giving the user the opportunity to block such spam, Debrincat said.

He estimated that some 80 percent of customers were having problems with spam. Service providers serving banking and finance, in particular, might find taking on Cloudmark valuable in halting phishing attacks.

"One of the issues has been that if banks want to do stuff, they run to ISPs or Telstra to do it, and they say 'it's not really my problem'. It's really the banks' problem," Debrincat said. "But you can stop 98 percent of the email fraud that goes around."

Gary Iwatani, president of US-based Cloudmark, said in a statement that Cloudmark blocked spam -- including phishing and other fraud-related email -- using a fully automated process.

Cloudmark offered protection for the desktop, mail server, and gateway, using feedback submitted in real time to fine-tune filter accuracy, algorithm-based targeting and an automated data feed from millions of its users, he said.

"This partnership with eCorner extends our global reach and allows us to protect customers in the Australian and New Zealand markets," Iwatani said.