“In addition to the moral imperative to eradicate online child abuse images, enterprises face a serious threat from pornography, due to both the legal risk and the fact that it can be a severe resource drain,” Commtouch CEO Gideon Mantel said.
“We are committed to working with both IWF and Image Analyzer to eradicate online exploitation, while assisting enterprises to enhance their compliance with sexual harassment and other legal statutes. Several of our partners have already begun offering these special protections in their security products,” Mantel said.
IWA, founded 10 years ago in the U.K., is an authorized organization dedicated to minimizing the availability of illegal Internet content, especially images of child abuse. Since its inception, the IWA has processed, on average, more than 1,000 complaints of abusive online content and compiled a list of more than 31,000 sites that contain potentially illegal content. Consumers can subscribe to have their email streams cross-referenced through the IWF URL list using Commtouch anti-spam software.
Image Analyzer software eliminates unwanted pornographic images with a detection engine that scans of images using algorithms that evaluate colors and shapes. The system then categorizes images as clean, pornographic or suspect.
Current legislation such as the Children's Internet Protection Act in the U.S. and the EU’s directive 2000/31/EC, as well as other child protection laws, have increased concerns about child pornography.
With U.S. Title VII, corporations could face potential sexual harassment suits by employees who have been exposed to pornographic content at work via their co-workers.
“Companies can become libel for sexual harassments suits if they allow employees to access these types of images or any kind of offensive material,” Commtouch’s Senior Director of Marketing Rebecca Steinberg Herson told XBIZ from company headquarters in Israel. “This is what I understand from the people I’ve spoken with. So, in order to protect themselves, they basically need to do everything in their power to prevent their employees from using the company’s infrastructure to access offensive materials.”
Commtouch offers several products that analyze large volumes of traffic in real time, utilizing patented Recurrent Pattern Detection technology to spot characteristic patterns of mass distribution common to spam, phishing and virus outbreaks.
As a provider of anti-spam technology, Commtouch has alliances with several organizations including the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the Association of Anti-Virus Asia Researchers and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, as well as partnerships with various software developers.
