Hands On Report--Sp@mX, the Road to Near Zero Spam at Week 4

Four weeks ago we began a trial of Sp@mX, now at v3.1.9, by Hendrickson Software Components (hsc). We bought it for $19.95 with a monry-back gurarantee to see if it could significantly reduce our 4000+ weekly spam messgages. We have double filtered our spam but it's not 100% accurate and, therefore, we had to follow a highly time-consuming daily activity. We also occasionally missed and lost an important email.

Sp@mX is not a filtering application. It automatically reports spam to the various server administrators that handled the spam on its way to us. Sp@mX also allows us to send copies to the FTC and the California Dept. of Justice. It relies on server administrators to take action to block our spam based on the reports. We really like Sp@mx's proactive fight-back approach. Here is our initial review of v3.0.2. The developer, Jeff Hendrickson, has continuously improved the product such that now, at v3.1.9, it automatically parses Apple Mail and Eudora Mail files and has a much better Mac OS X user interface.

We provided a progress report at the end of week one of our Sp@mX trial, a second report at the end of week two and a third report at the end of week three. How did we do during week four? Here is a table showing the number of spam messages we received and processed each week:

After a continuous week to week decline in spam that resulted in at least a 71 per cent reduction, we saw an increase during week four of 18 per cent. However, the holidays probably played some role in the pattern and our guess is that there was a post-holiday surge by spammers during week four.

We get back reponses to Sp@mX reports of our spam from server administrators. Here is a table showing the number of abuse reports we received back each week:

The pattern appears to confirm an effect of the holidays, although server responses are thought to be automatic. The percentage rate of responses, i.e. responses per spam message, has improved from 7.6 to 15.8 per cent in four weeks, a doubling. The rate during the holidays, week three, was significantly lower than week two or week four, with week four being the highest.

We also get Returned Mail error messages in response to Sp@mX reports. Here is a table showing the number of failed delivery responses:

Like the abuse reports, there was a dip during the holidays, i.e. week three. The number for week four has nearly doubled the reports of weeks one and two. This may, at least in part, be due to improvements made in Sp@mX during week four that result in more comprehensive spam reporting.

As we stated in our review, our spam problem is not typical of an average user. We have three primary business email addresses that at one time were all posted openly, unprotected, on our web site They were obviously harvested by spambots and are probably on every spammer list traded or sold daily. Despite the modest retrenchment during week four of our use of Sp@mX, we are still very happy that our spam messages have declined from over 600 per day to under 200 per day.

Our spam load is not yet "near zero" but the huge difference has saved us an enormous amount of time and angst. In addition, we have configured Sp@mX for just our one main business address, bill(at)macsonly(dot)com. If it gets to under 100 without further effort beyond using Sp@mX, we will be completely satisfied. Then, we will assess whether we should attack the two contributing email addresses directly.

We also use six other email addresses that we have never posted to the internet and that collectively draw less than 100 spam per week, still a nuisance to be addressed eventually. We get no spam at all from our .Mac or Earthlink or non-business Macsonly addresses--absolutely none--and we do use them. Curiously, the highest spam producer of the six comes from our email address assigned to us by our cable internet company, one that we have never even used. Obviously, some @#$%^&*! at Cox Communications is selling their subscriber list to spammers or Cox was hacked for them. Our Cox address is too unusual for the volume of spam we get with it to be the result of random selection by spammers.

HSC has a money-back guarantee on its $20 Sp@mX if it does not drive spam to near zero. So there appears to be nothing to lose in trying it out on an unacceptable spam problem. If everyone reported their spam to mail server administrators, the FTC and state agencies, perhaps the appreciation for its sheer volume and its cost would sink in and the problem would be seriously addressed. [Bill Fox--Disclaimer: HSC started this week as an advertiser on Macs Only!]