We launched our subscription-based service as a new more-effective defense against increasingly persistent and determined spammers. Our filtering tool provides subscribers with the latest tools and techniques for combating spam form submissions.

Over the past year, we noticed a significant increase in unwanted submissions of online forms on our client sites. In each case, we analyzed the attack and then developed and deployed defenses. Over time we saw the attacks evolving, changing methods, and growing in sophistication. These attacks had a negative impact on our client's web sites and required more of our attention and effort.

Our programming team creates a Filtering Service account for you and adds a snippet of code to each online form. That enables the Filtering Service to intercept and analyzes the form input - checking where the form came from, what the input fields contain, and more than a dozen other checks; and determines how to process the submission.

Online forms, whether for ecommerce or simple contact us use, are essential to connecting with your web site visitors. Spammers seek unprotected forms to probe for technical weaknesses on your site. Their attacks are occurring more frequently and with more creativity. If a weakness is found and exploited it can damage your site, your legitimate visitors, or your business operations.

Recent attacks include;

• Denial of Service (DoS): Spammers use programs to submit forms in quick succession (recent occurrence: 3,500/minute) to overwhelm and eventually break the web site; and
• Credit Card Validation Tests: Thousands of emails, each with a different credit card number, used the web site's ecommerce resources to validate stolen numbers.

Our new subscription service is designed to thwart such attacks and to stay abreast of new attack techniques and methods.

We are not in a build-it-and-forget-it environment anymore. Attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication and a subscription-based service provides a funding stream for a dedicated team to address on-going threats.

Online form owners can initiate the filtering service by becoming a subscriber. Subscriptions can be renewed or discontinued at any time. Once a subscription is initiated, our latest form defenses are applied to online forms on your site; either by our technical team or yours via a filtering service API.

All forms on your site can be addressed. There is a limit to the number of forms being filtered in each subscription level.

Our filtering service includes more than a dozen heuristic techniques to identify, analyze, and combat spam and unwanted attacks. Once identified, our filtering tool takes specific action to address the unwanted submission without impacting normal business operations.

Unlike products design and implemented for a specific client, our new filtering tool learns and evolves and shares those experiences with the subscriber community. For example, when we identify a new type of attack and develop a defense, that defense is shared and installed on all active subscriber accounts so all benefit.

Assessing and defending against increasingly sophisticated spam attacks is an ongoing activity. To remain effective, it needs dedicated staff and other resources to stay abreast of the evolving environment. We felt that in defining a new approach we entered a different business model and one that was unlike our typical product structure.

Our filtering service includes a private Subscriber Dashboard which includes filtering service information and user guidance, user-managed controls, and real-time reports on the Filtering Service's activity.

No. The Filtering Service includes an API which provides programming access to the service.