Subject: [Asrg] Filtering limitations

From: "David F. Skoll" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 23:36:26 -0500 (EST)

From: "Chris Lewis" <[email-masked]>

> Send each user, according to whatever schedule they may choose, a
> single email containing dates, froms and subject lines of mail
> that's been filtered. Give them the opportunity (via a link to your
> quarantine server) to view or discard the blocked emails.  Or even
> provide a mechanism for selecting automatic forward (ie: based on
> from) without having to adjust the front-end server-wide filtering.

Our product does this, and it works very well.  You can also view the
queue in spam-score order; this tends to clump the obvious spam together
and makes it really easy and efficient to process the queue.

Also, our filter lets people opt out if they choose, set their own
thresholds, blacklists, whitelists, custom rules, etc.  I think the key
to successful filtering is to make it as customizable as possible.  It
makes it harder for spammers to evade filtering (everyone has his/her own
rules) and makes it much easier to sell to skeptical end-users.

Of course, you provide pre-canned settings for unsophisticated users,
and give the power users the full range of settings.

From another post [sorry, I get the digest]:

> First premise: Filters do not work better than 95%

Sounds about right.

> Second Premise: False Positives Matter a LOT

That's true too.  So you need a *very* efficient user-interface for
dealing with false positives.  Our solution was to present quarantined
messages sorted by spam-score order; you'd be amazed how quickly one
person can dispatch hundreds of spam and a few non-spam e-mails.

--
David.
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