Spam Email Gone Wild Phil Weintraut Product Manager

Spam: Email Gone Wild! Phil Weintraut Product Manager, Cox High Speed Internet September 23, 2004

Overview • Cox Communications • What is SPAM? • How does it affect Cox and our customers? • What is Cox doing as an ISP? • What are the results? • Questions. 2

About Cox Communications • Atlanta based serving 6. 3 million customers. – Multiple products: Cable, Internet & phone for residential and business. – 2. 2 million Internet customers • Serving 37 AZ communities • 15 k mile fiber-coax network • 1. 7 million customers in AZ 3

What is Spam? • Unsolicited junk email • Why Spam? – Monty Python’s Flying Circus! – Piles and piles of something you don’t want. 4

How it Affects Cox and Our Customers • Clogs email in boxes – Wasted time • Offensive in nature • Clogs Internet in general – Slowdowns in website visits – Slow deliver of email • Drives many, many phone calls and emails to Cox • Customer dissatisfaction • ISP Blacklists 5

By the numbers…. Customer Care: • 11. 7% of customer complaints • $194, 600 + cost to handle Customer Security Department Complaints 6

Cox’s Response to Spam • Customer education • Employee education • Network monitoring – Watching for infected customers – Shutting down abused ports • • Spam blockers Pop-Up blockers Email virus scans Anti-Spyware 7

Impact • Over 800 k Spam blocker downloads to date • Spam complaints reduced dramatically • 1 st Qtr – 11. 7% • 2 nd Qtr – 7. 3% • 3 rd Qtr – 5. 82% thru Aug • Aug only is. 01%! • Blacklisting is rare. 8

Questions? 9