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Reviewing Anti-Spam Offerings

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the eggs-bacon-sausage-and dept.

Joel Snyder writes "Just finished looking into the innards of 40+ anti-spam products at Network World. The biggest, ugliest, and most comprehensive look at this market that's ever been done. Conclusions: lots of great products to choose from at the top (a dozen or more); a few stinkers in the bunch; and it's basically impossible to review Spam Assassin, which is unfortunate."

4 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Spamassassin by confusion · · Score: 4, Interesting
    All-in-all, they didn't blast spamassassin as hard as I thought they were going to. It was sad to see that they didn't think they could get anyone to help them review SA, and it was sadder that they got a lot of the facts wrong about SA, like that it is built around a bayes database.

    The mere appearance of SA, though, is impressive because those trade rags rarely include anything open source (partly due to marketing opportunity for commercial, paying companies).

    Jerry http://www.syslog.org/

  2. Just regurgitating marketing numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The buying guide is useful just for putting all the contenders together. But don't believe the claims until you test them. Barracuda, for example, touts the capability of millions of messages a day, but we are sending our second test unit back because it just can't handle a modest load of real world mail. Their 600, for example, claims it can process "25 million messages per day" but that assumes it is rejecting 95% of the mail -- that's nowhere in their fine print.

  3. RBLs rule by mabu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A well-designed RBL blocks 95+% of spam and consumes less resources than all the other solutions. Plus it has the added benefit of stopping virus and worm propagation, phish e-mails and lots of other scenarios where unauthorized SMTP relays operate.

    I see no reason to use client or server-side products that analyze the mail content, when this slows down mail service and reliability. RBLs, blocking mail based on the legitimacy of the source address has proven to be the most effective method of curtailing spam, and unlike all the other solutions, this one aversely affects spammers by not allowing them to consume your resources.

    If you're in the business of making money off selling spam products, I can see your support of these various half-way solutions, but otherwise, the best way IMO is to employ RBLs at the server level and slowly work towards SMTP whitelisting. I contend this is an inevitability if the authorities don't start prosecuting spammers for their illegal computer tampering.

  4. Re:I don't know how much I trust their conclusions by joel_snyder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, you're right; it's an error. My notes show that you can turn on SSL for management, but what got written in the article is wrong. It'll get fixed online immediately. That crept in as part of the editing process.

    On the other hand, I don't understand why ANYONE ships ANYTHING that talks on port 80 anymore. It's not like OpenSSL hasn't been proven through-and-through (or you can write your own). Port 80 might be fine for pictures of your vacation, but the management interface on a corporate mail server should be encrypted and authenticated.

    However, if you want to discount a 10,000 word article for a single error, then you're going to have a hard time believing anything you ever read anywhere ever.