By Sonya Rabbitte, 16 June 2000 16:43
NEWS Spam filters used by some of the most popular email providers are failing to prevent junkmail attacks, with one service offering as low as two per cent protection. A study by US-based eTesting labs trialled 15 email providers over ten consecutive days, and found no service was completely spam-proof. AT&T WorldNet scored highest, blocking 73 per cent of junk mail. America Online ranked second with a 40 per cent protection rate, and Yahoo! mail came third, blocking 36 per cent of spam. Other popular services surveyed included Excite, Lycos and Hotmail. All three were found to block less than one third of spam mail sent to them. A free spam filter run by lobby group, the Mail Abuse Prevention System, performed the worst - blocking only two percent of spam. It also blocked one of 220 legitimate emails sent to assess accuracy - the only service to do so.
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