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Knujon
Captain
Premium Member
Joined: May 25, 2006
Posts: 592
Location: USA
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 Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:36 pm Post subject: Anti-Spam Software "Doesn't Work" |
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As we have been predicting for 3 years...
A study by Brockmann and Co indicates that consumer confidence in anti-spam solutions is very low.
"From McAfee and Symantec to Apple and Microsoft, most anti-spam vendors are failing to fully satisfy customers, according to the survey by Brockmann & Company. ... customers rarely are fully satisfied by anti-spam filters packaged with email clients, hosted email or commercial anti-virus software. Too often, the products let spam through and mistakenly delete email that's not spam. "
http://www.brockmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=843&Itemid=69
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=9539&pagtype=all
http://www.sda-india.com/sda_india/psecom,id,102,site_layout,sdaindia,news,19660,p,0.html
http://www.knujon.com/news.html#080807
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PaulW2
Lieutenant
Premium Member
Joined: May 04, 2006
Posts: 152
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| Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:13 am Post subject: Re: Anti-Spam Software "Doesn't Work" |
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| Knujon wrote: | As we have been predicting for 3 years...
A study by Brockmann and Co indicates that consumer confidence in anti-spam solutions is very low.
"From McAfee and Symantec to Apple and Microsoft, most anti-spam vendors are failing to fully satisfy customers, according to the survey by Brockmann & Company. ... customers rarely are fully satisfied by anti-spam filters packaged with email clients, hosted email or commercial anti-virus software. Too often, the products let spam through and mistakenly delete email that's not spam. " |
I've always been reluctant to pay for any anti-spam software and what I have tried has never been very successful. A couple of years ago I started creating very personalised filters and now achieve a 99% success rate with no false positives. This is something that you have to work out yourself if you have the time and patience and an e-mail client with a high level of filtering capabilities. I used to use The Bat! but now use a Sieve script on an IMAP server.
Of course I'm not actually deleting the spam at present but moving it to temporary folders pending reporting to KnujOn, SpamCop and other interested parties. My inbox is clean, very important when reading your e-mail at work!
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oblueterator
Blue Angel
SIRT Handler
Joined: Apr 03, 2006
Posts: 305
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| Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 3:04 am Post subject: |
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I've been using (free) POPFile for more than two years, currently with 99+% efficiency. Although I get FPs and FNs as spam tactics and formats change, my only effort is clicking the "Reclassify" button on the POPFile GUI.
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pwillener
SRT Trainee
Premium Member
Joined: Apr 17, 2006
Posts: 1830
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 3:17 am Post subject: |
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I have been using Cloudmark Desktop for many years, and it has a 97% - 99% catch rate, with practically zero FP (about 1 in a year).
Users expect too much from bundled spam filters, or from idiot companies like Symantec or McAfee.
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Ikeb
Special Response Team
Forums Admin
Joined: Apr 20, 2003
Posts: 16542
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Knujon
Captain
Premium Member
Joined: May 25, 2006
Posts: 592
Location: USA
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| Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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To add fuel to this fire, consider McAfee's suggestions and comments in this article:
http://www.spokanejournal.com/spokane_id=article&sub=3246
| Quote: | | “While today’s spam filters have improved to catch a larger percentage of junk mail, the threat of spam never really goes away,” says Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs. |
It seems here he is admitting the failure of this approach.
He goes on to recommend:
| Quote: | | Don’t publish your e-mail address on any Web site or discussion forum. |
Surrender!
| Quote: | | If your mailbox starts receiving an abundance of spam, you can delete the mailbox |
Surrender!
The final two recommendations seem to contradict each other:
| Quote: | | Use anti-spam software, which blocks 97 percent to 99 percent of spam. |
| Quote: | | Keep a collection of mail you want to stop receiving and determine which e-mail addresses or phrases in the messages don’t change. Use this information to keep further unwanted e-mail out of your inbox by creating filters. |
What? Which am I supposed to do, buy your software(which you have admitted above doesn't solve the problem) or become so involved in the filtering process that it makes me wonder why I bought filtering software?
As Ikeb has mentioned, tinkering around with all these packages is great for people like us, but useless to the consumer at large. The consumer who falls for scams, buys junk, and responds to spam.
At only one point does he mention reporting it to your ISP, which is a problem in and of itself.
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