Logan:
I read with great displeasure your InfoWorld article on Fighting Spam, and
felt the need to make a few corrections, which unfortunately will never be
updated on your article, but perhaps point you in the direction of doing a
bit more homework next time. Your article may look 'good' to a end user,
but to anyone who is informed and works with SpamAssassin, it makes you
loose all credibility.
1. "and SpamAssassin 2.44, an open source spam filter included with Red Hat
Linux 9."
Wow. Our OLD mail server, which we took out off production about 4 months
ago is using 2.55. In my mind now, you're using Windows 3.11 and Microsoft
Office 2.0. Did you ever think to attempt a update or look for a more
recent version, to make sure you're using the most current version? Anyone
installing a production server would do so.
2. "In contrast to the commercial products, SpamAssassin represents an
older, first-generation anti-spam solution, and its age showed in my tests."
I'm sorry again you used an OUTDATED software. Can I expect a review of
MS-DOS 3.0 in your next article? OS/2 sometime in the future?
3. "All the products except Brightmail and SpamAssassin allow end-users to
add senders to the domain whitelist themselves."
Really? So then the fact that our customers could either go to our
interface and whitelist a user, or e-mail the message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (or conversly [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a fluke? Again,
I didn't install SpamAssassin, so perhaps that option isn't 'out of the
box' but the capability is there.
4. "And all the products but SpamAssassin use dynamic updates to keep up
with the evolving technologies spammers use to circumvent less
sophisticated filters. The default update cycle may be every few minutes or
once per week, depending on the product. Keeping the filters up to date
requires a subscription or maintenance fee."
So I'm paying how much to update my spamassassin? I don't recall giving
them a credit card number..
5. "You get what you pay for. SpamAssassin is an open source gateway that
is included with Red Hat Linux 9, and can be downloaded free from
spamassassin.org. However, it took more than 10 times as long to install
and configure SpamAssassin as it did any of the other products."
You get what you pay for? We paid nothing, and in reading the posts on the
SpamAssassin-Talk list - there is EXCELLENT support from other end users.
Free of charge. I'd say we got MORE than what we paid for. I didn't handle
the installation at all, but perhaps is it User Error that caused the '10
times as long' to install?
6. "I achieved a much lower level of performance to boot -- roughly 63
percent accuracy in identifying spam, with a relatively high number of
false positives."
Wow. Imagine if you ran a version more current than the one you're on.
7. "The whitelist is not difficult to add to, but there is no mechanism for
end-users to add to the whitelist or to automatically notify the
administrator to add senders."
See #3.
8. "SpamAssassin is the perfect example of first-generation techniques
becoming outmoded by advances in spamming technology. It looks for keywords
in the subject or body of e-mails, but is frustrated by words not in the
dictionary, such as "V!agra," or words that contain invisible HTML
characters."
And DOS 1.0 was the perfect example of first generation MS-DOS Operating
Systems. But since there's an update to it....
I'm not a lawyer, but I looked up the definition of libel in the dictionary:
1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures,
that damages a person's reputation.
Does libel apply to a company?
If it does, I'd suggest you remove your article, or do further research
next time.
SA is one of the best packages out there.
This message was CC'd to the SpamAssassin-Talk mailing list - feel free to
join and talk to some of the SysAdmins there - I'm sure you can get a nice
education.
Evan
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