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.
