Hands-On Report--Knocking Down Spam with Sp@mX at Week 2

Our spam problem had become overwhelming, over 600 spam messages per day that occasionally surpassed twice that. We had been tackling it with our web host's server level filter, Spam Assassin, that marks spam as JUNK before we download it and with Apple Mail's Junk filter. If we could just delete the result, we would still have the problem while traveling of having to download all that spam through a slow dial up connection. But we can't even delete the filtered spam because Spam Assassin and Apple Mail occasionally make mistakes and filter out mail we want, like 5 or so per day. So we have had to manually scan through 600+ spam messages before deleting them, a very time-consuming process and not 100 per cent accurate either.

Two weeks ago we began a trial of Sp@mX, now at v3.0.7 by hsc. It's a $20 application that automatically, more or less, reports spam to the server admins that handled the spam on the way with copies to the FTC and the California Dept. of Justice. It relies on server admins to take action to block the spam based on the reports. Here is our review.

We provided a progress report at week one of our use of Sp@mX. Our spam messages had decreased to an average of 360 per day, a remarkable 40 plus per cent reduction.

During week two of our trial we processed a total of 1,640 spam messages or 234 per day for a 35 percent reduction below the week one rate.

During week one we received 75 Mail Return Errors from the spam reports. During week two we also received 75 despite the reduced number of messages processed.

During week one we received 191 server acknowledgements of our abuse reports on 2,523 spam messages processed. During week two we received 213 on 1,640 spam messages.

So far Sp@mX seems to be working as advertised, with a 40+ percent reduction during the first week and an additional 35 percent reduction for the second week. Next week we'll post the results for the third week. [Bill Fox]