Press Releases

Stalker Software Partners with Mailshell to Provide Comprehensive Anti-Spam Capabilities

Intelligent Filtering Improves Enterprises' Ability to Intercept and Block Unsolicited E-mail

Mill Valley, CA - March 31, 2003 - Stalker Software, Inc., the technology leader in messaging solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Mailshell, a developer of the easiest and most accurate anti-spam engine. Stalker Software will expand its existing anti-spam capabilities by offering Mailshell's SpamCatcher as a plug-in service to its CommuniGate Pro platform, allowing e-mail users to easily benefit from SpamCatcher's comprehensive filtering system.

Enterprises are migrating toward increasingly aggressive solutions to help manage the exponential growth of unsolicited e-mails that inundate employees every day. According to Gartner, Inc., "by 2004, unless an enterprise takes defensive action, more than 50 percent of its message traffic will be spam." Employees spend up to four hours each day managing their e-mail boxes, costing corporations time and money.

"Because e-mail is among the most critical services for our corporate customers, we selected CommuniGate Pro based on its reliability, scalability, anti-virus and anti-spam features. In response to the proliferation of spam and its impact on our customers' ability to effectively use e-mail as a business tool, Stalker Software has provided advanced defenses," said William James, president of JamesNetworks.com. "Now armed with SpamCatcher, our CommuniGate Pro Server intelligently filters and discards unwanted e-mail, enabling our clients to more proactively communicate using the Internet."

The SpamCatcher engine identifies unsolicited e-mail at the server level and integrates seamlessly into the CommuniGate Pro platform. SpamCatcher uses hundreds of spam-blocking rules, including pattern matches, heuristic functions and proprietary and third-party databases. Complex algorithms are applied to compute the probability that each piece of e-mail is spam. SpamCatcher also creates a fingerprint ID for every e-mail message and compares it to existing fingerprints in its databases in order to continuously analyze new spam, create new rules and adjust the weighting of existing rules. Customers can opt to receive scheduled or real-time rules updates.

"Many companies are looking for anti-spam solutions that integrate seamlessly with their existing applications," said Tonny Yu, CEO of Mailshell. "The SpamCatcher engine lets CommuniGate Pro customers block virtually all spam without any new integration or deployment hassles."

"Because e-mail is the backbone for today's business communication, spam has evolved from a mere nuisance to a real business problem -- resulting in thousands of hours of lost productivity," said Jacinta Tobin, vice president of Business Development at Stalker Software. "Stalker Software leads the messaging industry in anti-spam functionality and was the first messaging solution to incorporate anti-spam features in 1995. Building on this heritage, our partnership with Mailshell delivers a bolstered solution for eliminating spam and restoring e-mail as an effective business tool."

Supporting more than 30 hardware and operating system combinations including UNIX, Windows, AS/400, mainframes and Mac OS X, CommuniGate Pro offers the most advanced, robust messaging solution, optimized to provide e-mail, collaboration, wireless and unified messaging all on a single message store. Because of the product's open standards-based architecture, CommuniGate Pro provides high-performance integrated messaging, supporting many types of content on a centralized platform efficiently and reliably.

About Mailshell
Mailshell is the creator of SpamCatcher, the easiest solution to spam. The company's products include anti-spam software developers' tools and a suite of enterprise and personal anti-spam products. Mailshell recently earned an "Editor's Choice" award in PC Magazine's review of spam filters, and has been dubbed "priceless" by Forbes magazine, "excellent" by the Associated Press and "easy to use" by CNET. Mailshell is based in Santa Clara, CA, with an additional office in San Francisco. For more information visit http://www.mailshell.com.

About Stalker Software
Founded in 1993, Stalker Software, Inc. is based in Mill Valley, California. Stalker Software is the technology leader in messaging solutions for more than 30 major computer platforms. The company's core technology merges security, reliability, scalability and a wide range of integrated services, with ease of deployment and maintenance. More than 5000 customers worldwide, ranging from global telcos and ISPs to educational institutions and corporations, service millions of accounts with CommuniGate Pro.

For more information about Stalker Software, Inc. and its products, please contact Alice Liptrot, director of sales and marketing at (800) 262-4722 or (415) 383-7164; by fax at (415) 383-7461; or e-mail at ali@stalker.com. Visit the Stalker Software Web site at http://www.stalker.com.

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