Stop 99% of Spam with ISWest. filtering system protects your e-mail servers, gateways against Spam, viruses.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January, 2004

VENTURA COUNTY/Agoura Hills, Calif. – Sick of Spam? An Agoura Hills Internet service provider offers a highly effective Spam blocking service that runs at 99 percent efficiency.

ISWest’s revolutionary Spam filtering system uses the Bayesian approach, a means of predicting the certainty of an e-mail to contain Spam based on previously sent e-mails. Using logic first devised by 1700’s clergyman Thomas Bayes, ISWest and its users train mail servers to identify and remove Spam from e-mail in boxes, said Drew Kaplan, ISWest vice president.

Users educate the server by telling it what is Spam and what is not Spam, he explained.

"When they receive Spam, they simply forward the message back to the server at an address that tells the server the content of the message should be regarded as Spam in the future," Kaplan said. "That information is then processed into a database and used to make future decisions on whether or not future incoming messages are Spam."

Equally as important is a filter’s ability to avoid false positives – in other words, falsely characterize legitimate e-mail as Spam. ISWest meets this need with a system that literally filters Spam into a separate inbox, which users can view to make sure they haven’t lost important messages, Kaplan said.

"Just as the filter learns what is Spam, users can also teach the filter what isn’t Spam by forwarding falsely filtered e-mails back to the server," he said.

While users can rest assured that no e-mail is ever "lost," the filter has definitely eased the burden of cluttered inboxes, Kaplan said. In fact, recent statistics show that the server is filtering about 97 percent of Spam messages, while user participation has dropped the level of false positives to nearly less than one percent, he said.

Using the filter easy – ISWest clients simply indicate that they would like to be included in the filtering. Forwarding emails to the server is encouraged, but not mandatory. The same goes for an occasional check of the Spam box through the mail client – Outlook, Netscape, etc. – just to be sure that valuable email isn’t being lost. And to keep maintenance easy, Spam is automatically deleted after a week.

ISWest customer James Jaeger, who has logged statistics on the filter since it was built, reported positive results after monitoring the service for six weeks. Using a sample of about 1,046 Spams, Jaeger noted a false alarm rate of less than one percent.

As a result, "customers will quit wondering if there’s anything of interest in the Spam folder," he said.

About the company:

ISWest ranked on the 2003 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, which names the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America. ISWest was also named to Deloitte & Touche’s prestigious Los Angeles Technology Fast 50 program, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in L.A.

The ISWest broadband network supports thousands of customers and serves more than 150 major metropolitan areas across the United States. The company’s success is built on the founders’ commitment to deliver the best customer care in the Internet industry.

Founded in 1996, ISWest is headquartered in Agoura Hills, California. The company's executive management team represents combined experience of more than 50 years of management experience, with expertise in telecommunications, Internet services, networking, operations and strategic marketing.

For more information or to conduct an interview, call Drew Kaplan at ISWest, 818-735-3000 or toll-free at 877-735-1500.