Anti-porn software adds 'posture recognition' to flesh detection

Fledgling e-security firm MessageLabs today unveiled a service aimed to banish the distribution of email porn at work.

MessageLabs has teamed up with software developer First for Internet to provide a service, which claims to distinguish between 'acceptable' pictures - such as artistic nudes or holiday snaps, in which there may be a great deal of exposed flesh - and those of an obscene or 'adult' nature.
MessageLabs claims the software guarantees 95 per cent accuracy, because its new product includes posture recognition and composition analysis tools.

Previously software relied solely on analysing the amount of flesh exposed in a picture file attachment, but Mark Sunner, CTO at MessageLabs labelled these systems "basic" and "clueless".

Jonathon Tait, product-marketing manager for MIMEsweeper at Baltimore refuted the allegations that its own software is in someway inferior.

Tait said: "I haven't seen [MessageLabs'] software yet, but I'd be very interested to see if they can achieve the figures they say they can."

However, the MessageLabs software cannot deal with porn emailed through some services including Hotmail.

For related news see:
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http://www.silicon.com/a45414
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http://www.silicon.com/a45495
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http://www.silicon.com/a44872