As Spam Epidemic Continues Hostway Offers Cleanup

Chicago, IL—March 17, 2004—Hostway Corporation, a leading provider of Web hosting and other managed services, today gave customers the opportunity to increase their power in the fight against spam and viruses with the release of CleanMail Plus, a customizable spam detector and virus shield.

In addition to filtering spam, CleanMail Plus also blocks most of the viruses that spread via email. This feature not only protects individual end users, it can also help to minimize the effect of such viruses for enterprises as well as the Internet in general. The new service is included free of charge to all current and new customers of Hostway’s premium hosting packages. CleanMail Plus will be available for a nominal annual fee for customers of Hostway’s Gold and ValuePlus hosting packages.

According to Nucleus Research, the economic cost of spam is $874 a year for every employee with an email account, which multiplied by 100 million such employees comes to a cost of about $87 billion for the United States. Spam is costing companies real money by incurring productivity loss and increased maintenance and overhead costs.

To help the cause, some major ISP providers, such as Microsoft, America Online, EarthLink and Yahoo recently banded together and launched six lawsuits under the US CAN-SPAM legislation against hundreds of people accused of sending spam. Hostway is also answering the call by giving more spam-fighting power to its customers.

"We fully support the intent behind the recent lawsuits and trust that the US CAN-SPAM legislation can help put an end to this epidemic in the long run, but we know that customers are demanding immediate action," said John Lee, Hostway’s Director of Marketing. "People are extremely frustrated that their inboxes are overflowing with other unsolicited messages. CleanMail Plus puts control directly in the customers’ hands, helping prevent these intrusive messages from ever being delivered and putting an end to the time wasted on them."

By using advanced technology to scan all incoming emails for known spam and viruses, CleanMail Plus gives users the ability to create white and blacklists by email address or domain name, so they can decide who they receive mail from. One of the problems of other spam blocking systems is that they can block email from legitimate senders along with spam. By giving customers the ability to set their own black and white lists of senders, CleanMail Plus limits the amount of misclassified messages. CleanMail Plus also allows customers to manage their lists and other filter preferences with an easy-to-use Web-based control panel.

Additionally, CleanMail Plus rules can be customized at both the domain and individual email address level. This added flexibility helps system administrators set spam and virus filtering rules on a company-wide level while preserving the right of each individual email address owner to customize his or her filter.

Hostway launched CleanMail Plus in response to customers’ growing need for an effective spam and virus filter that works seamlessly with email systems without disrupting the day-to-day activities of busy business professionals.