eleven e-mail security solutions revolve around the eXpurgate technology. eXpurgate sets itself apart from conventional anti-spam and anti-malware technology by focusing on the central characteristic of every spam and malware e-mail: its distribution via mass e-mail. This approach enables optimum detection of both spam and new virus outbreaks, and simultaneously minimizes the risk of incorrectly categorizing legitimate e-mails.

eXpurgate technology reduces each e-mail to a fingerprint that is compared to other e-mails’ fingerprints in a central database for reliably identifying bulk e-mail. Using an additional screening process, undesired (spam) e-mails are differentiated from desired (e.g. newsletters) bulk e-mails and each e-mail is assigned to a distinct category.

eXpurgate technology takes advantage of the fact that very few e-mail users open spam, malware, or phishing e-mails, and that even fewer react to them. That’s why such messages must be sent en masse in order to be profitable for spammers. By contrast, conventional spam and malware detection methods examine the sender’s reputation, usually the IP address (e.g. using blacklists) and then search through the e-mail’s contents for typical spam words and phrases, or combine the two approaches. This type of technology can often only react to new spam tricks at a very slow pace and exhibits a relatively high false-positive rate.

eXpurgate technology is the basis of eXpurgate Anti-Spam, the code-based virus detection system within the framework of eXpurgate virus protection and the eXpurgate virus outbreak detection system.