Retailers’ IT crews scramble to fight SoBig e-mail virus

With the SoBig e-mail virus swamping in-boxes with unsolicited messages daily, many retailers are managing to keep their e-mail systems working only by dedicating an unusual amount of IT resources to fighting spam. “SoBig hasn’t radically disrupted our ability to respond to customers, but it’s certainly wasting our IT resources,” says Dave Dierolf, vice president of IT for consumer electronics retailer Crutchfield.com. “We’re always irritated by having to spend time on viruses instead of customer service.”

But Crutchfield and other retailers say they’ve been able to keep their e-mail marketing and other forms of e-mail communications, such as order confirmations, flowing by taking several steps to guard against getting infected by SoBig and other viruses and worms that have circulated around the Internet in recent days. In addition to assuring their systems have the latest anti-virus software patches, retailers are paying closer attention to the way they manage outgoing e-mail, to assure it has clearly defined “from” and “subject” headings, to prevent prospective customers from simply deleting it in the heat of the virus frenzy. “You have to turn up the threshold for monitoring e-mail for every domain,” Dierolf says.

Crutchfield also uses what it says is an effective anti-spam tool, SpamAssassin, which runs on a Linux server and is available from SpamAssassin.org. It also runs Norton anti-virus software from Symantec Corp.

Altrec.com, a retailer of outdoor sports apparel and gear, has been getting hit with hundreds of SoBig e-mail messages daily, but has effectively guarded against the virus by using the open-source MailScanner anti-virus software, also running on Linux, says Shannon Stowell, co-founder and vice president of business development.

At Bluefly.com, an anti-spam program already in the works this year has enabled the discount fashion retailer to experience a strong August in terms of the number of e-mail marketing messages delivered and converted to orders, says executive vice president Jonathan Morris. “We’ve not seen any interruption this month,” he says.