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.
