Microsoft Plans New E-Mail Filter To Screen Spam

Microsoft Corp. is going to take another shot at solving the spam problem, announcing Monday plans for a new e-mail filter called SmartScreen.

The SmartScreen filtering technology will debut in 2004 in an add-on application for Microsoft's Exchange Server 2003. It will use algorithms to determine whether incoming e-mails are junk, then filter them before they get to the inbox. All the details weren't released Monday, when Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Bill Gates announced SmartScreen at industry trade show Comdex in Las Vegas. But George Bilbrey, e-mail filtering expert and vice president/general manager of deliverability services at ReturnPath, gives Microsoft's filtering technology high marks.

"It's pretty solid stuff," he said. "The kinds of technologies they're using generally have low false positive rates, meaning that incorrect identification of spam by Microsoft's filters is generally low.

Bilbrey adds that Microsoft, through products like Outlook and MSN Hotmail, have a great set of data to pull from in terms of a broad and diverse user base, and he expects that Microsoft SmartScreen will have an even lower false positive rate.

SmartScreen's products also fit into the much-publicized "seamless computing" domain Gates has referred to before, in which computers and other devices can "talk" automatically and trade data without technological hiccups or other security issues.

Seamless computing is currently happening, but at a limited capacity. Cell-phone users who check their e-mail via a wireless Internet connection are an example of this. According to Gates, software can do much to improve upon that connectivity.

However, the danger of seamless computing is that multiple applications will be linked together and secured by a single program. While Bilbrey maintains that sending commercial mail through fewer filters is a good thing for e-mail marketers because of less hold-ups and a greater possibility that a marketing message will get through, there's a caveat.

"The danger is one set of rules, for one broad-reaching company," he said. "There are hundreds of companies out there devoted to spam filtering, many will be worse, but some will be better."

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