Has Spam Decreased?

[ixie02]

Just wondering if anyone who hosts with VT has realized a reduction in spam after changing smtp ports to 2525.

[cleonard]

Nope, not I.

Still get about 150-200 spam messages a day even with spamassassin enabled at 5.0 and delete set.

[Ballyhoo]

Originally Posted by cleonard

Still get about 150-200 spam messages a day even with spamassassin enabled at 5.0 and delete set.

That begs a question...does SA even work? It seems to catch less than 1/4 of what I am receiving and doesn't touch the spam pics that are now arriving.

[bootNumlock]

yeah, my clients are constantly asking, 'is the a better way to reduce spam?'
isn't there another service vortech could investigate? BTW that's my question

ixie, if spam is better for you, count your lucky stars!

[dpyers]

I haven't had any problems getting valid emails with SA settings of 3-4. Seems to help someone. For my personal address, I have it set at 2.0. 5.0 just seems to be a rather arbitrarily picked default.
I also use the extra filters available for an imap account.

[soky]

seems to be on the rise to me... and spam assassin is essentially worthless IMO.

Has anyone found a good dedicated solution? I'm to the point that I would consider a dedicated box with a real solution.

1) Easy to set up (duh)
2) Easy to configure domains and accounts
3) Administrator level spam filtering tools
4) Admin level rules at the server level and domain level.
5) domain level filtering tools
6) User level filtering tools as well as rules and auto fwd/response
7) server level (not domain level) license

Anyone have an idea?

Another thought would be that a few of us go in together, partition the drive and share this resource.

What say you?

[jmbeach]

I have my SA settings cranked down to 2.0 and am still getting new batches daily... seems they cannot be kept up with, but I don't dare take SA off the delete setting. I was getting far more junk before so I feel pretty good about it now.

Then again, I only get about 10% legitimate mail these days so I guess I've gotten used to it.

[ixie02]

Originally Posted by bootNumlock

yeah, my clients are constantly asking, 'is the a better way to reduce spam?'
isn't there another service vortech could investigate? BTW that's my question

ixie, if spam is better for you, count your lucky stars!

LOL - I just hope nobody is hosting a site for a group of nuns!

[Ballyhoo]

Originally Posted by ixie02

LOL - I just hope nobody is hosting a site for a group of nuns!

Haha-that's a good one!

[soky]

Does 25 million church women count? They are ones who do complain a good bit... but then... well... it's 25 million church women. (DOH)





for real

[bootNumlock]

maybe we have a better chance in getting new spam protection from vortech than we do with the whole .net 2.0 deal???

Brad... any thoughts on spam protection?

more .02 from me...
Make Brangwyn the minister of ASP.NET
Select a Tech to be the minister of SPAM PROTECTION
Select a Tech to be the MINISTER of EMAIL
Finally the minister of Security

each one of them is responsible for researching and recommending win/win scenarios for the future. Then the team as a whole implements when budgets and appropriate timelines permit.

[DigitalSkyline]

The last few months I've seen an increase of spam... its been widely reported that email filters have not kept up with the spammers and that hordes of zombie machines have sent an unprecidented amount of spam this year.

I don't know what can be done, email is broken. SA used to be great, but now that its so easily bypassed I hope that they come up with a solution... it used to be a great sellng point, now I can't even point to that as a reliable solution. :/

[dpyers]

Spam went up 100% over the past year and 60% in October and November alone. The anti-spam tools are always a step behind the spammers, but now the spammers are taking larger steps.

I'm not sure there is a good solution using the current email and securoity technologies. At some point, we're just throwing good money after bad if we look for a fix within the status quo.

[Ballyhoo]

Well, we very well might be throwing good money but I would like to offer some options that the clients can play with and that I can recommend different setting so we can at least be addressing the problem. If nothing else it at least gives the illusion of doing something.

On a side note...I have seen many posts asking about SA setting (I started one myself) here and at other sites. I have yet to find anything that really explains from the customer side what the different settings will result in and how to configure for different sectors of the market.