Spam Filtering Intro

For some people, biggest hurdle to success is in understanding - that there is a fine line, a delicate balance that must be struck between identifying spams as spams and identifying hams (legitimate emails) as hams. After all, it's a very simple matter to filter 100% of spam - the trick is in tuning a machine to be able to draw the fine line between spam and ham in the right place.

Still others need to understand that what appears to be 'obviously spam' to them, is not quite such a simple decision for a machine - at least not without filtering out a lot of hams too.

Still other folks must reconcile the truth - that there is no method of spam filtering that works 100% - exceptions to be noted. Any spam filtering strategy that achieves 95% spam blockage is considered a successful implementation. But every implementation is different. Some organizations have a zero tolerance for blocked hams, even 0.01%. Still other organizations would prefer to pay someone to manually sort through thousands of messages in a spam pit, looking fort the odd blocked ham that needs to be released to the recipient. 

Cause and effect relationships often require debunking. Those who do not understand how such things work are quick to make invalid observations, to which they will cling like glue. Debunking such superstition is not easy and often takes a stern explanation.

Some people will never be able to understand, reconcile, and overcome these perceptual hurdles regarding spam filtering. They are not technically minded. That's fine, not all of us are. Accounting, for example is a mystery to me, and technical awareness might be just as foreign to an accountant. Unfortunately for you, if you are supporting an organizations spam filtering efforts, your job can be greatly complicated people like this. Their perception is - "We bought this spam filter, why did I get a spam last week" - quite unaware of the hundreds of spams that were blocked.

We will be covering all facets of spam filtering, many of which may or may not apply to your configuration. For people looking for client side solutions your options are more limited to the commercial products available. These products do nothing to resolve the amount of email that must be downloaded, they can only reduce the amount of email in you inbox. There is still plenty of good information here that applies to client side solutions

Preventing spam on the server side is preferred. Server side spam filtering provides much greater flexibility and savings over client side. Most of you though have no intention of running your own mail server. It is however, quite simple to run a mail server right from your own home. The only requirement is an always-on internet connection such as DSL or Cable.