Bravo! Well Said!
-----Original Message----- From: Evan Platt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 2:46 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: SpamAssassin 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 I'm sorry again you used an OUTDATED software.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 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/ _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/ _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
