How many CPU cycles will this new product use while doing an incomplete job (since it can only use so many cycles)? Why must the PC always be used as the last (only) line of defense? [Answer: it's the one place Microsoft makes money on every user] There are solutions that can PREVENT ALL THE SPYWARE far ahead of the enterprise/ISP's firewall [and the end user's PC].
For example, 0Spam.Net has successfully blocked all spyware installed by references in email content for the last 18 months. Similarly, 0Proxy.Net has been equally successful against web delivered spyware since 9/1/2004 when it debuted. All this with an audited error rate of less than 1 in 500,000 false positives.
Start thinking a little outside the box folks! With so many people in the computer industry, several people have got have this right. And the chances that it's not Microsoft are statistically the most likely.
Your magazine's analysis of 0Spam.Net completely missed the boat as to our service's accuracy level by reporting our false positive rate at 5% of message traffic. Clearly we would not have any customers if that were the case. Your results are statistically irreconcilable with the fact that for the last 18 months our service's false positive rate has been less than 1 in 2,000,000 false positives. You made no attempt to determine why your findings on a small sample of 10,000 messages differed with our production results of hundreds of millions of messages. As such, your reporting of our service as having a "dismal 5% false-positive rate" is not only inaccurate, but disserves the needs of your reader base. Your analysis was far from a realistic test of our service.
The problem with the test analysis is simple: it primarily boils down to your attempt to review 36 products simultaneously. While Mr. Snyder is to be commended for his efforts and did as well as he could with such an unrealistic task, he could not spend the time with each vendor that would be expected by a company's executive management for acceptance testing of a vendor chosen to solve such an important business problem as spam.
0Spam.Net is a service offering with real customer support personnel behind it and numerous feedback opportunities, NONE of which Mr. Snyder chose to explore. Perhaps no one expected a product to offer real service levels and direct interaction with the customer. While many vendors don't offer high service levels to their customers, our practice of doing so has shown with real production results that it leads to phenomenal quality, accuracy, and security levels.
To be specific as to how the testing was unrealistic, our normal acceptance testing process for new customers involves a 30-day period during which time auditors and trial account coordinators work closely with customer staff to collect feedback and adjust filters appropriately. The "tuning" period offered by Network World involved no interaction with Mr. Snyder ("the customer") and was considerable shorter in length. Further, we were not able to "touch" the service settings once the test period started; auditing and customer interaction go on 24x7 (as needed) with our service because, well, it's a service - not a piece of software or a box. Sadly, while there is not much need to have interaction after the acceptance testing, it is critical at the start of the acceptance process and was not possible given the test methodology.
Mr. Snyder also stated that our product "has no knobs" to make adjustments; it is unfortunate that he appears to have had so little time to read and follow the most basic of the end user documentation available for our service. There is no need for end users (or an administrator) to tune lots of knobs - most whitelisting, blacklisting and other tuning operations are easily done with an existing interface they are already familiar with: their email client.
In summary, we are dismally disappointed that your magazine spent such a small amount of effort understanding and testing the products as compared to what would have reasonably been expected by an enterprise IT staff in evaluating a product for actual acceptance testing. At a minimum, one would have expected you to seek to understand why your statistically tiny test sample of 10,000 messages might differ so much from the results of a much statistically larger body of production results with real customers. While we understand the pressure Mr. Snyder was under to try to evaluate 36 products simultaneously, your methodology came up short in our case and allowed a product with a customer track record far better than any of the other products in your review to be greatly shortchanged.
Slashdot Mirror
How many CPU cycles will this new product use while doing an incomplete job (since it can only use so many cycles)? Why must the PC always be used as the last (only) line of defense? [Answer: it's the one place Microsoft makes money on every user] There are solutions that can PREVENT ALL THE SPYWARE far ahead of the enterprise/ISP's firewall [and the end user's PC].
For example, 0Spam.Net has successfully blocked all spyware installed by references in email content for the last 18 months. Similarly, 0Proxy.Net has been equally successful against web delivered spyware since 9/1/2004 when it debuted. All this with an audited error rate of less than 1 in 500,000 false positives.
Start thinking a little outside the box folks! With so many people in the computer industry, several people have got have this right. And the chances that it's not Microsoft are statistically the most likely.
-Bill Franklin, President, 0Spam.Net
Zero Spam Network Corporation
1550 Madruga Ave, Ste 405
Coral Gables FL 33146
Phone: 305-666-0373
Email: bill@0spam.net
"Imagine a world with: No Spam, Viruses, ID Theft or Spyware - Guaranteed - http://0spam.net"
A copy of what we sent to the editor of NW:
Your magazine's analysis of 0Spam.Net completely missed the boat as to our service's accuracy level by reporting our false positive rate at 5% of message traffic. Clearly we would not have any customers if that were the case. Your results are statistically irreconcilable with the fact that for the last 18 months our service's false positive rate has been less than 1 in 2,000,000 false positives. You made no attempt to determine why your findings on a small sample of 10,000 messages differed with our production results of hundreds of millions of messages. As such, your reporting of our service as having a "dismal 5% false-positive rate" is not only inaccurate, but disserves the needs of your reader base. Your analysis was far from a realistic test of our service.
The problem with the test analysis is simple: it primarily boils down to your attempt to review 36 products simultaneously. While Mr. Snyder is to be commended for his efforts and did as well as he could with such an unrealistic task, he could not spend the time with each vendor that would be expected by a company's executive management for acceptance testing of a vendor chosen to solve such an important business problem as spam.
0Spam.Net is a service offering with real customer support personnel behind it and numerous feedback opportunities, NONE of which Mr. Snyder chose to explore. Perhaps no one expected a product to offer real service levels and direct interaction with the customer. While many vendors don't offer high service levels to their customers, our practice of doing so has shown with real production results that it leads to phenomenal quality, accuracy, and security levels.
To be specific as to how the testing was unrealistic, our normal acceptance testing process for new customers involves a 30-day period during which time auditors and trial account coordinators work closely with customer staff to collect feedback and adjust filters appropriately. The "tuning" period offered by Network World involved no interaction with Mr. Snyder ("the customer") and was considerable shorter in length. Further, we were not able to "touch" the service settings once the test period started; auditing and customer interaction go on 24x7 (as needed) with our service because, well, it's a service - not a piece of software or a box. Sadly, while there is not much need to have interaction after the acceptance testing, it is critical at the start of the acceptance process and was not possible given the test methodology.
Mr. Snyder also stated that our product "has no knobs" to make adjustments; it is unfortunate that he appears to have had so little time to read and follow the most basic of the end user documentation available for our service. There is no need for end users (or an administrator) to tune lots of knobs - most whitelisting, blacklisting and other tuning operations are easily done with an existing interface they are already familiar with: their email client.
In summary, we are dismally disappointed that your magazine spent such a small amount of effort understanding and testing the products as compared to what would have reasonably been expected by an enterprise IT staff in evaluating a product for actual acceptance testing. At a minimum, one would have expected you to seek to understand why your statistically tiny test sample of 10,000 messages might differ so much from the results of a much statistically larger body of production results with real customers. While we understand the pressure Mr. Snyder was under to try to evaluate 36 products simultaneously, your methodology came up short in our case and allowed a product with a customer track record far better than any of the other products in your review to be greatly shortchanged.