In 2006, you can't just press a button and have all your spam go away. But you may be able to pay somebody else to press lots of buttons and handle most of your spam for you.
I get asked about this fairly often, but it's hard to answer because I've never worked for a company that relied entirely on a 3rd party product for our spam filtering -- originally because for a long time there weren't any good products, and then later because I've been at places which were way too big. But I wrote this list of criteria earlier today, and thought it'd be worth sharing (and saving for the next time somebody asks.)
As commercial products go, Symantec's Brightmail seems to have the most marketshare -- and from what I've seen & heard, they're very good. Also, I have friends there, and they're all very smart. Cloudmark probably comes in second -- but again, I haven't done any serious research or testing.
In general, things to look for in any spam filter include:
- a variety of filter types (not just Bayesian)
- 24x7 operations center watching the mail stream
- speed of updates; anything over an hour is useless these days
- easy communication back to the operations center, especially to report false positives (messages mistakenly classified as spam)
- user/site-specific customization, including the ability to locally whitelist known senders
But most importantly, if they say they can block 100% of spam, then they're either lying to you or they have no real-world experience. Run away from
these types as quickly as you can.
A few days ago, a study came out of Canada which tallied up which spam filter worked best. I still haven't been able to download the video, and I am now under house arrest for snatching that fiber line. Nevertheless,...
Tracked: Aug 07, 14:31
A few days ago, my friend Neil gave a brief answer to the question "Spamfighter, howcome you got into spamfighting?" I get asked that a lot, too -- and while my answers vary depending on my mood at the time (and usually go on way longer than the questi
Tracked: Oct 21, 10:11