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Commtouch Reports October Spam Trends: Spam Accounts for 74% of Global Traffic, 86% of US Corporate Email; Looking Ahead to the Holiday Season, Gift Promotions Lead the Spam Hit Parade

Posted on: Thursday, 10 November 2005, 09:00 CST

Commtouch(R) (NASDAQ:CTCH), the developer of ground breaking RPD(TM) technology for real time anti-spam and Zero-Hour(TM) virus protection, today announced spam trends and statistics for the month of October. The announcement was based on data from the Commtouch Spam Detection Center, which analyzed billions of email messages in the month of October 2005.

Spam Levels -- Market Segments and Geographical Breakdown

During the month of October 2005, spam accounted for a whopping 74% of the email traffic of Commtouch's global user base, which includes over 35 million mailboxes in 130 countries. In private mailboxes, spam accounts for 82% of all incoming messages. In the average corporate mailbox, 62% of emails are spam, but corporate spam levels vary significantly across geographic regions:

-- US corporate mailboxes are the hardest hit, with spam constituting 86% of all incoming mail. Holland follows with spam levels of 78%.

-- Scandinavian countries also show high levels, ranging between 66% (Denmark) and 71% (Sweden).

-- Average spam levels were recorded in Spain (49%), Australia (50%), and Israel (53%).

-- Relatively low spam volumes are enjoyed by enterprises in Austria (29%) and Hungary (36%).

Gift Merchandise is the #1 Spam Category

With the holiday season around the corner, spammers are focusing on gift merchandise more than on any other product category. Offerings of cut-rate gift merchandise -- Rolex and Louis Vuitton replicas and the like -- accounted for 21.08% of all spam. For the first time in over two years, pharmaceuticals were not the leading spam category.

Topic % Popular examples ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Gifts 21.08% Replicas of brand names (Rolex, Louis Vuitton) Pharmaceuticals 19.93% "Your doc thinks you're a millionaire" Sexual Enhancers 19.69% "What every woman has been looking for" and Dieting Finance 18.77% Mortgage refinancing Porn and Dating 12.63% "Don't be lonely for another minute" Software 3.47% Low-cost Microsoft Windows and Office software Fraud 2.09% Stock recommendation, 419 scams, Phishing Other 2.34%

Popular Spam Domains

Spammers carefully choose their domains to avoid being identified by service providers and security managers. One common way to avoid blacklisting is by forging the domains of large service providers. During the month of October, the most common domains used by spammers were: yahoo.com 1.23% hotmail.com 1.03% msn.com 0.71% aol.com 0.47% gmail.com 0.33% yahoogroups.com 0.30% bellsouth.net 0.20% ebay.com 0.17% 163.com 0.16% ediets.com 0.15% angelfire.com 0.15% verizon.net 0.13% icqmail.com 0.13% earthlink.net 0.11%

About Commtouch

Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CTCH) is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world's most important communications tool -- email. Commtouch has 14 years of experience developing messaging software, and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam and Zero-Hour virus protection solutions. Using core technologies including RPD Recurrent Pattern Detection, the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes billions of email messages per month to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by over 35 OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with 35 million users in 130 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel and has a subsidiary in Mountain View, CA. For more information, see: www.commtouch.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including projections about our business, within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For example, statements in the future tense, and statements including words such as "expect,""plan,""estimate,""anticipate," or "believe" are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on information available to us at the time of the release; we assume no obligation to update any of them. The statements in this release are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations as a result of numerous factors, including business conditions and growth or deterioration in the Internet market, commerce and the general economy, both domestic as well as international; fewer than expected new-partner relationships; fewer than expected license agreements resulting from Commtouch's exclusive rights to market DCC; competitive factors including pricing pressures; technological developments, and products offered by competitors; the ability of our OEM partners to successfully penetrate markets with products integrated with Commtouch technology; a slower than expected acceptance rate for real time AV solutions in general and the Commtouch Zero-Hour(TM) Virus Protection product in particular; availability of qualified staff for expansion; technological difficulties and resource constraints encountered in developing new products, such as the Zero-Hour solution; and the failure of Commtouch to meet The NASDAQ Capital Market's listing standards in the future, as well as those risks described in the text of this press release and the company's Annual Reports on Form 20-F and reports on Form 6-K, which are available through www.sec.gov.

Recurrent Pattern Detection, RPD and Zero-Hour are trademarks, and Commtouch is a registered trademark, of Commtouch Software Ltd. U.S. Patent No. 6,330,590 is owned by Commtouch.

Source: Business Wire

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