Press Releases

Mailshell to Partner with Return Path on Sender Score Email Reputation Management Service

NEW YORK, NY, August 10, 2005 - Return Path, Inc. announced today that it will incorporate email reputation data from Mailshell into its Sender Score system, the first reputation management system for email senders and receivers. Sender Score is currently in Beta, and will officially launch later this quarter. The data will come from Mailshell's SpamCompiler engine, which optimizes, compiles and executes more than one million filter checks in a fraction of a second. Mailshell licenses the SpamCompiler engine to companies looking to add best-of-breed spam filtering to their own products.

"Mailshell's global network of OEMs provides a rich, diverse and current source of email reputation data," says George Bilbrey, vice president and general manager of Return Path's Delivery Assurance Solutions. "This data will further enhance the scoring platform for Sender Score, giving both receivers and senders the information they need to make email program improvements."

Mailshell's system quantifies reputation via advanced statistical models. This reputation-based analysis creates de facto advanced 'phishing' detection, along with protection from fraud and other blended threats. By focusing on reputation, Mailshell is also able to deploy a language-agnostic statistics-based solution that catches foreign language spam more accurately than content-focused solutions.

Mailshell also plans to query Sender Score data in its filtering platform. "By contributing our reputation data to Return Path's Sender Score, we add value to the system, making it a more useful rating service for all parties," said Tonny Yu, CEO of Mailshell. "We also believe that Sender Score can be another valuable tool for differentiating between legitimate commercial email and spam."

Sender Score aggregates 60 different data criteria from around the Internet that quantify a mailer's reputation, drawing data from a diverse sample of more than 40 million e-mail boxes covered by filtering companies and ISPs. Sender Score includes multiple reputation indices that track variables such as complaint data, e-mail send volume, unknown user volume, security practices, identity stability, and unsubscribe behavior - all of which factor into a statistically modeled score that compares individual mailers against the whole sample using a standardized set of best practices. The scores will be transparent and available for anyone to review at full launch, though underlying program data will only be available to Return Path clients and partners.

Sender Score rounds out Return Path's Delivery Assurance Solutions set, joining Return Path's delivery monitoring tools, consulting, and the Bonded Sender e-mail accreditation program.

About Return Path, Inc.: Founded in 1999, Return Path is an e-mail performance management company dedicated to improving the reach, delivery performance and overall success of permission-based e-mail programs. More than 1,500 companies use Return Path's services to generate superior results from their e-mail programs, taking advantage of Return Path's pioneering innovation in deliverability, ECOA, list hygiene, double-opt-in list acquisition and best practices strategy. Return Path Delivery Assurance Solutions are the industry's original and premier e-mail deliverability tools and services, including the Bonded Sender Program for e-mail accreditation, and remain the only full-circle solution for solving e-mail deliverability issues. For more information, please visit www.returnpath.net, e-mail info@returnpath.net, or call toll-free 866-362-4577.

About Mailshell Inc.: Mailshell is the world's leading anti-spam engine provider and is the first and only anti-spam engine with SpamCompiler Technology. SpamCompiler can process more than a million filter checks in a fraction of a second. Via Mailshell's OEM partners, more than 6,000 companies and 10 million consumers worldwide rely on SpamCompiler software to block spam and phishing. Mailshell's software helps its OEM partners, including Oracle Corporation, CyberGuard, Panda Software, ZyXEL, Broderbund and Lyris Technologies, among others, generate new anti-spam revenue, upsell existing products to new anti-spam customers, and cut anti-spam engineering and support costs to near zero. For more information: www.mailshell.com.

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