On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Frank March wrote:
On average Mailmarshal as configured here seems to catch 50% of genuine spam 'aimed' at me (but is getting better) and about 25% of the blocking messages are false positives (despite recent problems with this list, I think this might also be improving incrementally). Nevertheless, personally, I would much rather have the spam. The record with virus filtering is, however, exemplary.
A 25% false positive rate for Spam is bad to the point of being incompetent. Anything worse than a 1% FP rate except where someone is specifically after "aggressive" filtering is very bad. That sort of rate forces people to constantly check their spam folders (I assume they can) to find incorrectly identified email. I'd hate to think how many important emails are being lost. Blocking just 50% of spam isn't very good either, especially considering the amount of legit email dropped. I would guess it's another case of the govt paying peanuts and getting monkeys. Probably they have just installed the software "out of the box" rather than engaging brain and actually trying to set it to the appropriate level for the site. -- Simon J. Lyall. | Very Busy | Mail: simon(a)darkmere.gen.nz "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.