SAN BRUNO, CA – October 13, 2003 – IronPort Systems, the leading email infrastructure products and services company, along with TRUSTe, the leading internet privacy seal program, announced today the next generation of the Bonded Sender Program www.bondedsender.com, the industry's only complete solution for identifying legitimate email. After twelve months of extensive testing, the second major release of the Bonded Sender Program, which includes TRUSTe certification, oversight and dispute resolution services, is now available. The Bonded Sender Program now reaches in excess of 60 million mailboxes spanning more than 12,000 ISPs, validating the effectiveness and scalability of the program.

Solving a Complex Issue
As spammers evolve their content to look like legitimate mail, spam filters are increasingly challenged to keep pace. One undesirable by-product of spam filtering is "false positives" ­ the accidental blocking of legitimate messages. Studies show that as much as 30% of legitimate outgoing commercial email can be blocked by the receiving ISP without the sender's knowledge. The Bonded Sender Program allows legitimate senders of mail to avoid being blocked by overly aggressive spam filters by allowing senders to identify themselves, adhering to standards and posting a financial bond. When consumer complaints about mail received from a Senders IP address exceed a predetermined threshold, the bond is debited.

"In more than a year of operating experience, the Bonded Sender Program has demonstrated the effectiveness of a complaint-driven system," said Patrick Peterson , senior director, Services and Support at IronPort Systems. "Working with TRUSTe, the leading privacy seal and certification program, completes our vision of becoming the industry standard for identifying legitimate email."

TRUSTe's oversight gives ISPs and email receivers an added level of confidence that legitimate senders will be held to consistent high standards, and are protected against the risk of fraudulent complaints. TRUSTe and IronPort Systems have developed and published a set of email standards for the Bonded Sender Program. New senders who meet these high standards and post a financial bond based on mail volume can now apply for Bonded Sender status at www.bondedsender.com. Qualified senders will be certified and admitted to the program, enabling them to receive enhanced delivery at thousands of ISPs.

"The standards for participation in the Bonded Sender Program are intentionally rigorous and surpass email marketing industry guidelines," said Fran Maier, executive director of TRUSTe. "TRUSTe continues to elevate responsible players in online privacy and now in email. We are excited to be part of a solution that has built-in checks and balances ­ from certification, to the bond to a consumer complaint mechanism. Consumers will benefit by getting the mail they want and less spam."

Market Validates Unique Approach
The industry is rapidly embracing complaint-driven systems to help identify spam and legitimate email. Each of the 4 largest email providers in the US provides a "report as spam" button in their client software and uses complaint data to block spam. Messages that are spam have a compliant rate that is at least 100 times higher than that of a typical Bonded Sender, creating financial penalties for spammers.

"The Bonded Sender program is a mark of distinction for email senders," said Suresh Ramasubramanian, postmaster for Outblaze Ltd, a leader in electronic communication and collaboration services . "As an organization that manages one of the largest email infrastructures in the world, processing more than 85 million messages per day, we absolutely rely on the Bonded Sender program to reduce false-positives and reward senders who hold themselves to high standards of email conduct."

"Finding ways for users and ISPs to distinguish legitimate senders from spammers is the first step towards an eventual solution to the spam problem," said Markus Mullarkey, vice president, Outbound Marketing Solutions at CNET Networks. "It's also a key priority for legitimate senders like CNET Networks, because it helps ensure our messages are successfully delivered to the millions of users who count on the information we deliver each day. This new version of the proven Bonded Sender program gives us even more confidence than ever that our mail is reaching its destination."

About Ironport Systems™
IronPort Systems is an email infrastructure products and services provider targeting the Global 2000. The company has developed a family of products called Messaging Gateway™ appliances that offer breakthrough performance, unprecedented ease of use, and reduced total cost of ownership. Additionally, IronPort Information Services, Bonded Sender www.bondedsender.com and Senderbase www.senderbase.com, help guarantee the delivery of legitimate email and thwart the voluminous threat of unsolicited commercial email (UCE) or spam.

About TRUSTe
TRUSTe is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling individuals and organizations to establish trusting relationships based on respect for personal identity and information in the evolving networked world.

Founded in 1997, TRUSTe runs an award-winning global privacy certification and seal program. Its seal programs are considered Safe Harbors for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the EU Safe Harbor Framework. Today, TRUSTe maintains the largest privacy seal program with more than 1,400 Web sites certified throughout the world including AOL, Microsoft, IBM, Nationwide and The New York Times. TRUSTe's mission extends standards, certification and oversight into email with Bonded Sender and wireless with the Wireless Advisory Committee. For more information on TRUSTe please visit www.truste.org.