Computer Associates today announced the acquisition of anti-spam firm Qurb for an undisclosed cash sum. Qurb’s identity-based email security technology is designed to block spam and protect users against phishing attacks. The software builds a list of approved senders by scanning existing email and contact folders. People on this list get their email delivered straight to user's email inboxes while content analysis techniques are used to help users identify potentially legitimate messages that have been quarantined.

CA has licensed Qurb technology for its eTrust consumer product line since 2004 and will continue to market the technology as eTrust Anti-Spam as well as bundling it in its eTrust Threat Management suite, which also includes anti-virus and web filtering technologies. The acquisition of Qurb follows CA’s June 2005 acquisition of personal firewall firm Tiny Software.

Anti-virus firms such as Kasperesky Labs (Spamtest Project), McAfee (Deersoft) and Sophos (Activestate) have expanded in the anti-spam market via acquisition over the last two years. CA's deal extends this trend. More recently Microsoft has been getting into the act with the February acquisition of Sybari, which specialises in protecting messaging servers from malware and spam attacks, and managed service firm FrontBridge Technologies last week. ®

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