New AntiSpam Tools Top MDaemon 6.8 Enhancements

MDaemon’s already impressive abilities to block unsolicited commercial email will soon be reinforced through the incorporation of heuristic and Bayesian spam filtering tools.

With the scheduled electronic release in mid June, MDaemon 6.8 will include additional tools for spam pattern matching, white list and black list creation, spam detection through Bayesian probability filters, deciding the fate of messages marked as spam and controlling which messages are candidates for spam processing.

Other enhancements to MDaemon 6.8 include support for the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and the Wireless Markup Language (WML), plus expansion of its Secure Socket Layer (SSL) implementation.

Heuristic & Bayesian Essentials

Heuristic spam detection uses feature-matching rules, gained through experience, to identify spam. Through detailed analysis of incoming email based on these carefully designed rules, MDaemon assigns a numerical value or “score” to each message. This “score” is used to determine whether the message is likely to be spam or not. Through years of “learning” what spam (and non-spam) messages typically look like, the default set of rules -- and therefore the scores assigned by them -- have become very reliable and effective in detecting what is and what is not spam.

As a heuristic spam-fighting tool, Bayesian filtering "learns" to detect junk mail for each MDaemon installation by analyzing the header, subject and content of received messages known for sure to be either spam or non-spam. It does this by assigning a spam-probability to each word, domain name, HTML code or other "token" in each message. Bayesian filtering then uses this data to determine if new incoming messages are likely spam or non-spam. Because Bayesian filtering analyzes messages received at each email server, the "token" probabilities are site-specific. By regularly adding new known spam and non-spam into the Bayesian system, spam filtering "learns" to be more reliable in distinguishing between the two over time for each email server. MDaemon uses the Bayesian results to further refine the "scores" it assigns to messages.

“Heuristic techniques represent the next phase in anti-spam detection,” said Arvel Hathcock, CEO of Alt-N Technologies. “This type of software is important not only because it is very effective in detecting spam, but also because it fills all the gaps left by RBL (real-time black-hole list) techniques such as MDaemon’s Spam Blocker. When used in concert, these two techniques are extremely effective in detecting spam. I personally believe any mail server which does not incorporate the use of heuristics isn’t really serious about combating the spam problem.”

Wireless Support, Secure Socket Layer Encoding

WAP and WML are industry-standards for providing data access over wireless devices such as mobile phones, pagers, two-way radios and smartphones. WAP is the communications protocol, and WML is the markup language for data formatting. Adding WAP and WML support means our web-based email client is even more accessible to mobile users, Hathcock said.

SSL is a security protocol providing communications privacy over the Internet. WorldClient, MDaemon’s webmail server, currently uses SSL. MDaemon 6.8 adds SSL security to its SMTP, POP and IMAP protocols.

"This e-mail server is extremely affordable, is easy to set up, and it integrates all of the features necessary to deploy a complete corporate mail solution."writes Tom Yager of InfoWorld. Read the full review here.

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