By Tom Espiner, 20 July 2007 09:06
NEWS
Most businesses are unhappy with the performance of their anti-spam technologies, a survey has found.
The survey, entitled The Spam Index Report, found that most customers were not fully satisfied with the service they received from anti-spam vendors.
More than 500 businesses were polled by IT consultants Brockmann & Company, with 40 per cent of the respondents having IT responsibilities.
Respondents found anti-spam services provided by ISPs to be the least effective of all solutions. Spam filters were found to be the next most ineffectual method of killing spam. Only 21 per cent of respondents were "very satisfied" with their user-trained PC email client spam filters. Open source and proprietary email client filters were almost equally ineffectual, according to the survey.
Spam-filtering appliances were found to be slightly more effective than software filters but the level of customer dissatisfaction remained similar for email client and appliance spam filters, at 78 and 73 per cent dissatisfied respectively.
Real-time black listing, a reputation-based system that collects feedback from users to manage a black list of known spammer IP addresses and domains, was also found to be dissatisfying for businesses, with only 24 per cent saying they were "very satisfied".
Hosted spam filters fared slightly better - but only marginally. Fifty-eight per cent of respondents still said they were not "very satisfied" with the service they received from hosted email-filtering providers.
The survey found that challenge-response anti-spam technology garnered the most business satisfaction, with 67 per cent of businesses proclaiming themselves "very satisfied" with it. Challenge-response involves first-time email senders being challenged with a reply email, requesting that the sender reply to that message, to assure the original email is delivered. According to the survey this is an effective anti-spam measure, as spammers seldom respond to the challenge email.
Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
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1. Nick Cole
Challenge-response has to be effective, though it depends on client software at the recipient end of course.
Since much spam is sent from spoofed addresses then it is hardly likely that there will be a recipient for the challenge. If such a challenge system was automatic then even better. Though if spammers start using legitimate and successful responders email addresses (even if spoofed) than it will fall over again.
Blacklisting is useful but the problems of false positives can be far reaching. This is all too common. The responses of the blacklisters is invariably unhelpful and dismissive.
2. Simon
"Challenge-response involves first-time email senders being challenged with a reply email, requesting that the sender reply to that message, to assure the original email is delivered. According to the survey this is an effective anti-spam measure, as spammers seldom respond to the challenge email."
And neither does the website/mailing list/whatever you are trying to sign up with !
Unfortunately, this is one of those measures that LOOKS very effective until you look at all the false positives.
3. Ed Macnair
As the CEO of an anti spam solutions provider, I have to state that this survey by Brockmann & Company seems to have asked the wrong questions from the wrong people. To get a more accurate representation of the business view of anti-spam solutions, the survey sample should only have included IT people who have an overview of just how many emails are blocked and how many are going through. Anybody else (i.e. at least 60% of this survey sample) doesn't have the information needed to adequately judge a solution. For example, one of the most popular anti-spam weapons, the heuristic approach, is not even covered by this survey, as far as I can see.
Tom Espiner also reports that Challenge/Response was the anti-spam considered most effective. In my experience, businesses won't use Challenge/Response, particularly large enterprises, because it alters the mode of communication between them and their customers. The risk of losing contact is just too high. Some potential customers may even consider a challenge notification as a phishing attack trying to collect and confirm their email addresses.
The funniest aspect of this survey is that “spam-filtering appliances were found to be slightly more effective than software filters” There is in fact no such thing as 'hardware based anti spam'. Any appliance is actually a stripped down ('hardened') PC with an automated update and patching routine that runs a piece of anti-spam software.
Ed Macnair, CEO, Marshal Ltd. www.marshal.com
4. Peter Mackeonis
Spam can be greatly reduced if consumers boycott the corporations that allow their brands to go unpoliced in unauthorized spam campaigns. The spam-free initiative spamfrit.org explains how.
5. Tony
Google Mail seems to offer the best solution.... All spam into a separate bucket and does not clog up your mobile phone..