How is FirstAlert! performing for you?

There are further significant developments in progress, though it's probably a good idea to take a snap-shot as to where we are now and then review progress from time-to-time.

Accordingly, the following poll relates to FirstAlert! performance and possible improvements over the last four months.

It's inescapably imprecise and very subjective as there are so many variables involved (i.e. no. of spams, the time they are downloaded, individual Mailwasher settings, spam pre-filtered by ISP's, etc) so I'm just asking for your honest general opinion.

Please note that this poll applies only to subscribers of FirstAlert!, who continue to use it to help identify spam.

Thank you for your time.

Brendan.

Thanks Ikeb

I too have been occasionally confused at the underlying statistics when used in conjunction with BL's, local Blacklist, etc., and I now just use leave the Bayesian and FA! as the primary tools for monitoing.

Going back a few months I found that about 20-30% (tops) was about the norm, with hundreds of spam messages arriving every day. Recently however FA! hit rate has aspired to anywhere between 40% and 70% for me, though this is spam from a variety of sources on a variety of accounts and web servers.

Your reply prompted me to change the poll categories to include the inability to comment either way, as like yourself I'm sure that others may find themselves wanting to make the same comments for the same reasons.

Nevertheless, I thought it pertinent to raise this question now as a baseline to work from, and help establish if/when we are moving significantly forward in improving the system.

Thank you again

Brendan.

Better make that more than 70% for the last week

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I had not seen this thread when I started one under FirstAlert asking also if anyone had notice FirstAlert performing better because I had. I did a little experiment turning off filters to see if FirstAlert improved or not. See this thread: http://computercops.biz/t106939-Noticed_First_Alert_Working_much_better_Why.html

Just for interest.

I turned off First Alert on 30/12/04. Since then I have seen a decline in unsolicited mail. Currently, spam is about 50% of the December/January level (500/week then - and now around 250/week).

My spam goes up and down -- spammers probably get less business when the scumbags they work for take vacation.

My percentages are approximately 1/3 First Alert, 1/3 spam to me that is cc'd to a spamsink address and gets deleted before it is even checked with FA, and 1/3 getting through to my other filters.

Just for interest - follow up.
Spam received has continued to fall since my last (and first) posting on 9 June. Across all my accounts total received spam is now below 10/day. Filters have almost become redundant, but remain enabled. I can live with this whatever the reason for it.

Hmmm ... can't say that I notice such an effect. Spam levels do vary day to day but over the last couple of months average volume remains the same.