Spam & Anti-Virus Help
29 September 2003 at 1:09 pm
Australia’s largest ISP provider, Telstra’s BigPond has launched a new service for its 1.43 million customers to provide protection against viruses and spam following the worst month on record for Internet vandalism.
BigPond Managing Director, Mr Justin Milne says Internet users were now highly attuned to the dangers of email borne infections with worms and viruses the most common security incident reported by businesses and other organisations.
And according to the Internet Industry Association, spam now accounts for half of all global Internet e-mails.
Milne says that as the Internet evolves, worms and viruses can be highly disruptive.
To help combat viruses and the growing spam epidemic Milne says BigPond has spent several months sourcing the most up-to-date network-based spam filtering and virus filter protection.
He says customers will simply tick a box, download programs then “set and forget” and BigPond takes care of all the hard work back in the network.
BigPond customers will pay a fee of just $2.50 per mailbox per month for each of the spam filtering and anti-virus filters. The biggest advantage is that there is no need to load updates to the anti-spam and anti-virus software.
Telstra says that when virus alerts are issued, new patches are loaded to servers helping to provide customer protection. Individual users do not have to download updates, or check their licence agreements.
Telstra says this provides real industrial strength protection for BigPond customers and is a major advance for Australian Internet security.”
Milne chairs an Internet Industry Association task force on cyber-crime and has a long-term commitment to making the ‘net’ a safer place for Australian users.
Mr Milne says BigPond is ‘cracking down on spam’ not only by providing users with affordable world class protection but also by making it increasingly difficult for spammers to use the Telstra network to launch spam attacks and other acts of cyber vandalism.
He says that every weekday the BigPond network sends and receives about eight million messages – double the number of messages sent and received a year ago.
BigPond also subscribes to a daily international service that provides lists of known spammers in its efforts to crack down on spam offenders.
BigPond customers who opt in to pay the monthly subscription fee on their BigPond bills can access the following services from late September by visiting the BigPond website at www.bigpond.com or can call 131 282 for more information.
