The ePrivacy Group introduced spam-fighting technology this week that takes an unusual approach, borrowing traffic-shaping techniques used in setting service priorities for network applications.

SpamSquelcher looks at the overall pattern of e-mail traffic coming into a network and sets priorities for message delivery based on those measurements, rather than doing as competing products do and download each message and analyze each one to determine whether it is spam. Spam delivery is slowed down, and legitimate e-mail is expedited.

"This is not a filter, and is very different from any of the solutions on the market today. We analyze e-mail traffic and do dynamic shaping of the inbound e-mail traffic based on the results. We do not filter spam out, which results in false positives in every filter we know of. Instead, we shape the incoming traffic so spam delivery is slowed down," said Stephen Cobb, senior VP, research and training at ePrivacy.

The software is available now, and will shortly be available pre-configured onto an appliance, ePrivacy Group said.