November 1, 2003
Spam statistics for last month have been reviewed and posted.
http://mysecretbase.com/Message_Statistics.cfm
- Our spam detection algorithms got a big boost with a recent upgrade. We stopped about 74,000 mailpieces last month... and over 100,000 this month. The upgrade, which occurred on October 20th, affected message delivery stats dramatically despite its late arrival.
- Spam trapped by the primary system went up as a result of the above. Spam trapped by the secondary system went down, since so much wasn't getting past the primary system any longer.
- Virus attacks decreased significantly as well. Possibly due to decreased general risk or as a result of the spam filters stopping so much more mail (a lot of spam is virus-infected).
NEW SPAM OPTIONS!
Our newly upgraded system offers some long-sought-after options.
1. AutoWhiteListing -- Easily Create and Manage Your Own Whitelists.
"Whitelisting" is the practice of forcing mail through to your inbox no matter how screwed up the sender's mail server is. Formerly, our ability to whitelist mail for clients was severely limited, and required our intervention at the server level. Now, you can easily do this yourself: Anyone in your web mail address book is automatically whitelisted. If you don't use web mail now is a good time to start, if for no other reason than this one. All you have to do is put an address in your web mail account's address book and you will receive the mail no matter what problems they have
Note that if the sender conceals their address this can make the above difficult. However, we insert an item in the mail piece's headers that reveals the true sender address: In the mailpiece headers, look for the value listed under "X-Declude-Sender". This is the genuine sender email address.
2. "You've Got Spam!"
We expend an enormous amount of resources bouncing messages back to questionable senders whose mail has failed several tests, but not enough of them to get deleted ouright. The vast majority of this class of "mid-level" spam is genuinely junk email. However, this is also the sort of mail that is bounced due to incompetent mail server administration in an otherwise legitimate entity. In other words, its mail you want but can't get because someone on the other end has botched the mail service. Beginning shortly, we will stop bouncing these messages and instead do the following:
We will convert a spam into a much friendlier message and deliver it to you. By default, the subject is "You have spam!", and the body contains the sender's address, the subject, and which tests the spam failed. Then, there is a link you can click if you decide you want to view the original message.
3. Custom anti-spam systems per user or per domain
Our system has always had the ability to perform custom actions per domain, and even per user. However we have never had a pricing model for this sort of work. In next month's mail service update we will lay out all of your options, with prices. Of course, using the spam service we have been providing to you for almost two years is no extra charge.
Should you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact me.
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