Press Releases
Mailshell Incorporates Postiva Trusted
Sender Technology, Building Trust-Based Email Infrastructure
to Fight Spam
Mailshell Becomes First Spam Filtering
Email Client to Incorporate Trusted Sender
San Francisco, CA. - August 22, 2002 - TRUSTe and
ePrivacy Group today announced that Mailshell, a leading
provider of anti-spam software, has integrated Postiva™
Trust Stamp technology into its web-based email client
and SpamCatcher™ software. By offering customers
an additional way to distinguish legitimate commercial
email from spam, Mailshell's SpamCatcher™ software
and email client are the first to be certified as compliant
with the Postiva™ Trusted Sender Program - a cryptographically
secure way for consumers, ISPs, spam filters and email
clients to distinguish wanted and trusted email from
spam. Postiva™ Trusted Sender is a joint program
of TRUSTe, the independent non-profit organization best
known for its leading privacy seal and certification
program, and ePrivacy Group, a provider of trust technology
and services.
Email problems today range from outright spoofing
of legitimate companies to fraudulent gathering of personally
identifiable information, from spreading viruses masked
as security fixes to accidental flushing of important
email into the spam bucket. With today's announcement,
when a user of Mailshell's email client receives an
email with the Postiva Trusted Sender Stamp it will
have a special symbol so that they easily identify it
as trusted mail.
"Spammers intentionally emulate legitimate commercial
email and masquerade as legitimate companies. Incorporating
the Postiva™ Trusted Sender program into our email
client and SpamCatcher™ software provides an additional
way for users to distinguish between legitimate commercial
email and spam in disguise," said Eytan Urbas,
vice president at Mailshell. "This represents the
first time Mailshell has relied on a third party to
authenticate senders' legitimacy-partnering with TRUSTe
and ePrivacy Group is a natural fit for us."
ePrivacy Group's Postiva™ Trust Stamp technology
enables real-time verification that an email message
is authentic and sent by a legitimate Postiva™
Trusted Sender in good standing. Mailshell has embedded
this cryptographically secure technology into its email
client and SpamCatcher™ software to enable it to
recognize and verify Postiva™ Trusted Sender email,
ensure its delivery and alert the recipient as to its
validity with a special icon. Email sent by Postiva™
Trusted Sender certified companies assure the recipient
that the message is:
- Legitimate: from a company that is verifiably
compliant with program guidelines based on fair
information practice principles and email best practices.
- Genuine: the subject line of the email accurately
reflects the content of the email.
- Accountable: consumers can bring privacy-related
problems to TRUSTe's dispute resolution program,
a proven tool that has helped thousands of consumers
resolve their disputes.
- Responsible: the email is from an opt-in list,
but also enables the recipient to easily request
that they not receive future email from the sender.
"Nearly half of all consumer privacy complaints
made to TRUSTe are email-related," said Fran Maier,
TRUSTe's Executive Director. "Establishing trust
in email requires a combination of technology, industry
best practices, third-party oversight and dispute resolution.
Postiva™ Trusted Sender is critical to protecting
email for consumers and responsible businesses."
"The problems with email have gotten so bad that
trust is no longer an option, it is a necessity,"
said Vince Schiavone, chief executive officer of ePrivacy
Group. "Rather than focus on penalties to discourage
spam, Postiva™ Trusted Sender raises the bar for
wanted and trusted email, securely conveying trust in
a cryptographically armored seal that is backed by TRUSTe,
the leading non-profit trust authority on the web."
"Since its inception, Mailshell has been driving
innovation in the fight against spam. By bringing trust
and intelligence to email, our technology and the Postiva™
Trusted Sender program are a perfect complement to filtering
technologies like that of Mailshell's SpamCatcher™,"
said Schiavone.
About Mailshell
Mailshell (http://www.mailshell.com) is the creator
of SpamCatcher™ anti-spam software and The SpamCatcher
Network database that combine to block virtually all
junk email and spam. Mailshell has been dubbed "priceless"
by Forbes magazine and among "the best ways to
organize your email" and "the best ways to
stop spam" by The Wall Street Journal. The company
was founded in January of 1999 and currently blocks
spam for more than 800,000 people worldwide.
About TRUSTe
TRUSTe is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated
to enabling individuals and organizations to establish
trusting relationships based on respect for personal
identity and information in the evolving networked world.
Founded in 1997, TRUSTe runs an award-winning global
privacy certification and seal program. Its seal programs
are considered Safe Harbors for the Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the EU Safe Harbor
Framework. The TRUSTe seal is currently displayed on
all of the Internet's portal sites and has been rated
as the most trust-invoking seal online and the most
visible symbol on the Internet. Today, TRUSTe maintains
the largest privacy seal program with more than 1,500
Web sites certified throughout the world.
The TRUSTe coalition of sponsoring companies includes
AOL Time Warner, Intel, Intuit, the Japan Engineers
Federation and Microsoft Corp. TRUSTe boasts a large
network of online and brick-and mortar member companies
including BMW, Walt Disney Group, and The New York Times.
TRUSTe is based in Silicon Valley with an office in
Washington, DC. To learn more about making privacy your
choice, visit the TRUSTe Web site at www.truste.org.
About ePrivacy Group
ePrivacy Group is a provider of trust technology and
services. The company's patent-pending Postiva™
technology provides a language and framework of trust,
privacy and intelligence for messaging.
Postiva™ is an open system that extends existing
messaging infrastructure, platforms and email clients
to enhance privacy and enable powerful new functionality.
The company uniquely bundles its technology with program
principles and independent, trusted third-party oversight,
creating total trust solutions that surpass any achievable
with technology alone.
ePrivacy Group is a privately held company founded
by privacy, security, and marketing experts, known for
their privacy consulting and training services to global
2000 companies, government agencies and professional
trade associations. The company web site is eprivacygroup.com
and its offices are in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.,
Los Angeles, and Europe.
About Postiva™ Trusted Sender
The Postiva™ Trusted Sender Program is a cryptographically
secure way for consumers, ISPs, spam filters and email
clients to distinguish wanted and trusted email from
spam. Postiva™ Trusted Sender is a joint program
by ePrivacy Group and TRUSTe, the independent non-profit
organization respected as a leader in consumer trust
and privacy protection. Companies that wish to become
Postiva™ Trusted Senders agree to: (1) be certified
by TRUSTe as compliant with the email privacy and best
practices principles of the program; (2) install Postiva™
technology to affix cryptographically secure trust stamps
to commercial email so that consumers can verify the
authenticity of the sender, the integrity of the email
and the program compliance of the sender; (3) participate
in TRUSTe oversight and dispute resolution. The Postiva™
Trust Stamp is universal, identifiable in all email
clients and can be verified directly by the consumer.
About Postiva™ Trusted Sender Certified Program
for ISPs, Email Clients and Spam Filters
ISPs, email filters, and email clients that wish to
block as much spam as possible yet assure delivery of
wanted and trusted email can participate in the Postiva™
Trusted Sender Certified program. Certified ISPs and
email filters use non-spoofable Postiva™ technology
to identify and verify Postiva™ Trusted Sender
email for their customers, adding it to their white
lists to assure its delivery. Certified email clients
use a special icon to distinguish verified Postiva™
Trusted Sender messages in the recipient's inbox. Postiva™
Trusted Sender Certified technology is offered free
of charge as an open standard by TRUSTe and ePrivacy
Group.
# # #
Contact:
Terry Pittman, Postiva™ Trusted Sender, (703) 426-5658, tpittman@eprivacygroup.com
Stefan Pollack, Mailshell, (310) 556-4443, press@stefan.mailshell.com
