Slashdot Mirror
Critical Eye on SpamAssassin
ErrorBase writes "In this Infoworld article, Logan G. Harbaugh makes a great deal about an ancient (2.44) version of SpamAssassin comparing it with newer comercial variants.
Quote : You get what you pay for. [...] However, it took more than 10 times as long to install and configure SpamAssassin as it did any of the other products. "
Why did he not ask Kevin Railsback who had the whole thing working some while ago?)"
This was just a setup to make commercial software look better or just a incompetent reviewer. Next.
well, on the first page the author already makes it pretty obvious why SpamAssassin had to come out at the bottom of the list. He is comparing version 2.44, which was included in RH9 and is thus at least 8 months old, to the latest antispam software that is regularly updated. How on earth is that an unbiased comparison? In a world where spam patters change every week, if not every day, 8 months is a generation... he even says so in his article. I'd be interested to see the results of a similar test, but with SpamAssassin 2.60 and of course with bayesian filtering and some of the other optional features enabled...
Seriously:
- The Spamassassin installation documentation could be better written IMHO.
- Why doesn't RedHat's update service offer constand updates to the current version of SpamAssassin?
- Why doesn't it (as mentioned in another post) have the most important configuratoin setups included in their overall configuration GUI?
I really wish distributions would support SA better.This guy's article was a joke. Not only did he use an ancient version (in the spam world) of SpamAssassin but he either flat out lied in his article or was too lazy to seek out the truth. Hard to configure? Can't find docs? Doesn't support A B C D or E? If this guy had spent 5 minutes of his precious time doing to research on SA he wouldn't have made these flagrant lies. I don't get these people. I really don't. I CCd the Editor-in-Chief at InfoWorld, Mr. Steve Fox, as well.
Mr. Harbaugh,
This letter is in response to your InfoWorld article titled "Commercial solutions win, spam loses." In that article you portray all commercial spam solutions as winners and you portray the only open-source spam solution you reviewed as a dismal failure. I must say that as a professional in the anti-spam field I'm am truly disappointed by your incomplete and inaccurate assessment.
You start the article off quite well. Your introduction regarding two of the possible types of spam filtering is in terms that the average reader can understand. The introduction is also technically accurate, although it doesn't mention the other ways to filter spam.
You quickly take an opportunity to kick dirt on SpamAssassin by claiming it filters a fraction of the amount of spam all the commercial solutions filter. You hint at something during that statement when you said that SpamAssassin's "age showed in my tests," yet you fail to actually make it apparent to the user what the real truth is. I must ask, why did you choose to compare such an ancient version of SpamAssassin to the current versions of the four commercial products? Version 2.44 is over 9 months old. Spam filtering techniques are constantly evolving to filter a continually changing target. Comparing a 9.5 month old copy of SpamAssassin to the current version of BrightMail is like comparing a 1990 Chevy Silverado to a brand-new 2004 model. As an author and professional in the IT industry writing a column for InfoWorld, one of your goals is accuracy and fairness in reporting, is it not?
You make numerous false statements regarding SpamAssassin in your article:
1) "All the products except Brightmail and SpamAssassin allow end-users to add senders to the domain whitelist themselves... SpamAssassin allows only the administrator to add to the whitelist, with no direct access for users."
This is simply not true. SpamAssassin allows its users to add whitelist or blacklist entries to the personal preferences. It also allows its users to control the scoring for each individual ruleset with SpamAssassin's arsenal. Even the ancient version of SpamAssassin you chose to use had that simple feature. SpamAssassin also has the ability to automatically whitelist senders.
2) "Delegation of specific administrative functions is possible with all the products except SpamAssassin..."
This too is not true. As I said in response to number 1, SpamAssassin allows its users to control the scoring for each individual ruleset. This gives them the ability to disable certain rules, lessen the scores of others, and increase the scores of rules they wish had more weight. For example a user could disable the MAPS RBL DNS blacklist checks, whitelist joe@mydomain.tld, blacklist annoying-spammer@spamdomain.biz, and increase the score of the rule ALL_CAP_PORN to 2. The users can also create their own rulesets. SpamAssassin gives its users a high level of control over their spam filtering.
3) "Finally, in addition to stopping spam, all four commercial products provide content-filtering features, allowing the administrator to block incoming or outgoing e-mail that contains proprietary data, audio or video files, executables, sexually explicit words, or racial slurs. They also provide protection against DoS attacks and directory harvesting attacks."
This one baffled me at first. I'm honestly not sure why you want to compare features that have nothing to do with filtering spam. Filtering racial slurs from an email is