BT busts zombies and spammers

BT has launched a new 'spam buster' system which it hopes will clamp down on junk email within the telco's broadband network.

The Content Forensics system, which was developed by StreamShield Networks, is designed to combat professional spammers as well as botnets - rogue software that infects computers and transforms them into spam-generating networks.

The 'spam buster' scans and analyses the content of millions of emails every day to identify potentially problematic messages.

The system spots spam in real-time, as messages are sent through BT's mail servers, so BT can contact affected customers as soon as the problematic emails reach their inboxes and help them rectify the issue.

BT can also track down professional spammers operating within their network and terminate or blacklist these rogue accounts.

Previously, spam not only hogged network bandwidth and caused an annoyance - after becoming infected by botnets, some BT customers were identified as known sources of spam and thus ended up on industry-wide blacklists.

The new anti-spam system, which went into action this week, will help to limit these problems which BT said made business customers "extremely grateful".

According to Gartner, 80 per cent of email on the internet is spam, while security software maker Trend Micro estimates that around 6.5 billion separate items are sent per day.