Santa Barbara, CA, February 25th, 2002 - Junk email is on the rise and it's an industry-wide problem. One of the nation's largest anti-spam organizations recently reported a 600 percent increase in spam detected over the last twelve months. Several estimates classify up to 30 percent of all email as "spam."

Impulse Internet Services is helping users deal with this escalating problem with Spam Assassin, a new spam filtering system that scans all mail as it comes into the server, compares it to over 650 known spam characteristics, and assigns it a probability of being junk mail. Users can then set up an email filter based on their own preferences for the number of spam characteristics an email possesses.

"The battle against junk email is one we fight as an Internet Service Provider every day," said Dave Clark, General Manager of Impulse. "Spam Assassin gives our customers a very effective tool to fight spam, without their provider making decisions for them on what mail should and shouldn't be allowed to get through."

Spam Assassin is currently available to Impulse customers who utilize MS Outlook and Eudora email clients, and a web-based interface to Spam Assassin is currently under development. Visit http://www.impulse.net for details on Spam Assassin and other spam fighting tips.

Impulse Internet Services provides dial-up and broadband Internet access, email, web hosting and server co-location services to residences and businesses on the Central Coast of California. Impulse Internet Services is a privately held company based in Santa Barbara, California, and on the web at http://www.impulse.net.