Barracuda Networks Reports an Increase in Political Email During the Month of October.

Approach of Nationwide Elections Appears to Have Sparked Increase in Last Minute Email Campaigning

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- In the month leading up to tomorrow's midterm elections, Barracuda Networks, Inc., the leading provider of enterprise-class application security appliances, announced it saw an increase in certain types of political email hitting the millions of inboxes of its more than 35,000 customers.

"While we saw a lot of email campaigning taking place over the summer months for some of the big ticket campaigns, like gubernatorial races, in this past month we saw particular uptake on the number of emails sent focusing on more issue-specific races such as the proposition and initiative campaigns," said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks.

For instance, Barracuda Networks found that nearly one in every 1,000 emails sent in the last month was a political email. In October, it saw a particularly heightened increase in emails from organizations encouraging "No" votes on California Propositions 85 and 88. Barracuda Networks receives nearly half a million emails from system administrators every day.

"I think this correlates to how many voters would make their voting determinations," said Pao. "Most people had probably decided months ago who they would vote for to represent them in the U.S. House of Representatives or as Governor of their state, while they would not have formed their opinions on how they would vote on local or state issues until the weeks leading up to the election. So it is likely that the email campaigners tailored their campaigns accordingly."

The challenge with political email is that it cannot be categorically described as "spam" since many of the recipients have opted in to receive such emails based on any number of legitimate factors, i.e. their political party affiliation, or campaign contributions. As such, Barracuda Networks did not block emails from political campaigns outright. If the emails did not comply with specified rules determined by the customers' IT teams, they were blocked at that particular customer site.

Barracuda Networks only globally blocked those emails about which it received a large majority of complaints from customers. In many cases, Barracuda Networks customers complained that their users had not signed up for such emails, in which case it is likely that the email recipients names and email addresses were on a list that was then sold to a third party, an act that many spam operations employ. Further the only political emails that were globally blocked as spam were first analyzed by engineers at Barracuda Networks and were then determined to be in violation of the Federal CAN-SPAM act in some way. Such violations would include: not providing an opt out option in the email, emails coming from domains that could not be authenticated, or emails that do not indicate where they got the recipient's name.

Barracuda Networks recommends that organizations planning to communicate via email take the following steps to make sure that only their intended recipients receive the email and that they are not mistaken for spam operations:

* Disclosure - Include where you got the recipient's name and email address. This could be in the greeting or in disclaimer at the bottom of the message (i.e., "You were sent this email as active contributor and donor to our political party").

* Opt Out - Provide a one-click opt-out option for recipients and honor those requests.

* Personal Email Address - Encourage your recipients to receive their emails at a personal email address. Many companies seek to block e-mail not related to business.

About Barracuda Networks, Inc.

Barracuda Networks is the leading provider of enterprise-class application security appliances for comprehensive email, Internet and IM protection. Its products protect over 35,000 customers around the world, including Adaptec, Caltrans, CBS, Georgia Institute of Technology, IBM, NASA, Pizza Hut, Union Pacific Railroad Company, and the U.S. Treasury Department. The Barracuda Spam Firewall and Barracuda Spam Firewall -- Outbound protect organizations against spam, viruses, and violations to e-mail security policy. The Barracuda Web Filter, formerly known as the Barracuda Spyware Firewall, offers comprehensive content filtering and complete network protection against spyware, malware and viruses. The Barracuda IM Firewall is the only all in one gateway solution for IM traffic management and security. Barracuda Networks is a privately held company with headquarters in Mountain View, California. Barracuda Networks has offices in eight international locations and distributors in over 43 countries. More information is available at www.barracuda.com.