We’re having a lot of
problems with false positives since upgrading to ModusMail 3. In fact, I’d say
a substantial number of customers have asked us to disable spam filtering on
their accounts since the upgrade. Though I don’t have a specific percentage,
I’d guess that around 10% of our customers with spam filtering enabled have
asked us to disable it. I feel this is a substantial number as we do not
enable spam filtering by default on our customers’ accounts. In other words,
these were customers that asked us to enable it for them at some point in the
past.
I mention this not to
start a debate but because I feel we must be doing something different then
the rest of you. When customers ask for spam filtering, we set them at strong.
Back on ModusMail 1.4, we had all of the extreme scripts enabled because, even
at extreme, we had remarkably few false positives. When we upgraded to version
3, we figured that, at strong, if they complain about false positives, we
could clock them down to normal. If they complain that spam is still getting
through, we can push them up to extreme. We have room either
way.
Nevertheless, false
positives have been a real problem for us. There are several types of false
positives which are clearly identifiable. These include dating service
correspondences, real estate notifications, stock market trade notifications,
airline rewards and discount e-mails, monthly banking statements, etc. These
are all obviously automated mailings and probably very difficult to
differentiate from spam. Nevertheless, in each of these cases, customers have
specifically signed up for the messages and the messages are personalized in
some way or another for them. They are certainly not spam, and our customers
definitely want them.
The worst, however,
is the false positives on personal correspondences. We’ve had a fair number of
these reported to our staff. In fact, we run spam filtering on our staff
addresses and have experienced false positives on personal correspondences
ourselves. Unfortunately, most of these tend to be after fact. In other words,
we can’t afford to keep mail around in the quarantine long enough to report
much of these false positives – provided that the customer even agrees to let
us report it in the first place.
It’s a difficult
subject to address. Most of the false positives are of a personal nature and
not something that we can report to Vircom. We’ve had a fair amount of success
white listing banks, online trading companies, dating services and such, but
this doesn’t really solve the problem: Vircom cannot improve their spam
filtering without feedback, and we can’t provide feedback without permission
from the customer.
So, I guess I’m
asking, what are the rest of you doing? Does the “normal” setting produce
substantially less false positives? Is that what everyone else is using? Or
does everyone else consider bulk e-mail, even personalized bulk e-mail from
one’s bank or realtor or investment company or whatever, to be
spam?
I guess I don’t
understand how people can claim 98% catch rate and less than a .1% false
positive rate. At strong, we’re seeing a very good catch rate – maybe even as
high as 98% on some accounts. However, we’re seeing a much higher false
positive rate. More importantly, we’re receiving a lot of flack from our
customers.
Ben
Rogers
http://www.c4.net
v.508.240.0051
f.508.240.0057
-----Original
Message-----
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Hart
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 5:44
PM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:
[Modus] Anti-Spam company
Same experience here, company
called spam squelcher or something like that. they had a hardware based
product that would sit just behind our router. it would scan traffic and
block certian ips and stuff like that. wanted a ton of money for
it. i suggested he take a look at modusmail, told him we no longer had a
spam problem at all, false positives were extremely low all that stuff.
I should of tried to sell him Modusmail so i could get a
referral!
-----Original
Message-----
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mako Internet
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 5:17
PM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:
[Modus] Anti-Spam company
I just had a company call me up
trying to sell me anti-spam server software, I told them I had one already
in which I was already pleased. the man on the line was intriged and
started to ask questions. I told him I was seeing catch rates for my
boxes at 98%+ (alot of mine are more like 99.9%) so he asked about
false positives I said I see less than .1%. Next he asked about price
and how many users we had, he was so floored by everything I had compared to
what he was selling he was speachless, finally he said I am sorry I can not
help you and promptly hungup. The last word I heard was wow.
Just thought I would share this funny experience with
you.
