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Brightmail Inc. was a
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
-based technology company focused on
anti-spam Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam (unsolicited bulk email). No technique is a complete solution to the spam problem, and each has trade-offs between incorrectly rejecting legitimate email (false positives) as opposed to ...
filtering Filter, filtering or filters may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream * Filter (video), a software component th ...
. Brightmail's system has a three-pronged approach to stopping spam, the Probe Network is a massive number of e-mail addresses established for the sole purpose of receiving spam. The Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center (BLOC) evaluates newly detected spam and issues rules for ISPs. The third approach is the Spam Wall, a filtering engine that identifies and screens out spam based on the updates from the BLOC. Brightmail had partnerships with major Email providers and ISPs including
Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...
,
Sendmail Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) used for email transport over the Internet. A descendant of the ...
, Hotmail and Software.com. Other partners include
AT&T WorldNet Service AT&T Internet is an AT&T brand of broadband internet service. Previously, AT&T Internet was branded as U-verse Internet and bundled with U-verse TV, which was spun off into the newly independent DirecTV in 2021. AT&T Internet plans powered by fib ...
, Concentric Network, EarthLink, Excite, FastNet, FlashNet, Juno Online Services and USA.net.

The antivirus-inspired regular update mechanism used to detect spam email attracted the attention of
Internet security Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules ...
software makers and Brightmail was acquired by
Symantec Symantec may refer to: *An American consumer software company now known as Gen Digital Inc. *A brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Inc. Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier ...
in 2004. The Brightmail name continued to be used by Symantec, and the slogan ''Powered by Brightmail'' appeared on their products until 2011 when most products were renamed or deprecated into what is known as Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG).


Background

Founded as Bright Light Technologies, Inc. by a group of AOL expatriates led by Sunil Paul in 1998, with the promise to “end spam,” Bright Light raised $55 million in three rounds of venture capital led by Accel, TCV, and Symantec. After the second round of funding, Bright Light changed its name to Brightmail in summer 1999.
Brightmail's services were mostly geared toward ISPs, whose subscribers were demanding a solution to spam or junk email, as it is estimated that fifty percent of all email is unwanted spam. Brightmail made its name by creating a server-side
spam filtering Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam (unsolicited bulk email). No technique is a complete solution to the spam problem, and each has trade-offs between incorrectly rejecting legitimate email ( false positives) as opposed t ...
and customized software update services that employed sophisticated server-based rules that recognize spam and restrict the ability of spammers to relay mail through other people's servers. From a network of partners Brightmail gets an early warning of any widespread spam, which it analyzes in real-time at the Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center.


Symantec acquisition

In mid-2004,
Symantec Corp. Gen Digital Inc. (formerly Symantec Corporation and NortonLifeLock) is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. The company provides cybersecurity software and services. Gen is a Fortu ...
, an early investor that owned 11 percent of Brightmail, acquired the firm for $370 million in an all-cash deal. Symantec was expanding beyond antivirus to provide a variety of security software, services and hardware. To this end, it has made a number of acquisitions between 2002 and 2004, including SafeWeb and
On Technology ON Technology Corporation was a software company in the United States. It was formed in 1987 by Mitch Kapor after his departure from Lotus Software Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an Am ...
. Brightmail technology was incorporated in most Symantec's products, including the well-known Norton antivirus product line. The move marks Brightmail's shift from point antispam systems to the larger, more integrated email security solutions, including products that solve a wide range of email messaging problems. The CEO at the time of acquisition was Enrique Salem, who later went on to become the CEO of Symantec before being ousted in 2012.


Products and services

*Brightmail Anti-Spam: used to identify and filter unsolicited or unwanted electronic messages. *Brightmail Anti-Virus: an anti-virus module, is used to scan message attachments for viruses and other malicious code, and deliver anti-virus signature updates to customers automatically and securely. *Brightmail Reputation Service *Brightmail Anti-Fraud


References

{{Symantec Software companies based in California Gen Digital acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States