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by Marc Logemann.
Original Post: Kaspersky Anti Spam performs horrable
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I am getting spam, a lot of spam so to say. So i am constantly searching for the best solution in that area. Till last week, i relied on client side spam protection by SpamSieve, which is an Apple Mail plugin. This plugin really works rock solid. No false positives and only one false negative within a months or so. And remember, i am getting at least 50 spams a day, so SpamSieve really have to work here.
But the fact that the spam arrives my client (or bettter stays at the server, since i am using IMAP) is some kind of annoying. So i ve searched for alternatives on the server, which means plugins for Qmail. Since i dont want to recompile my mailserver or something, i searched for simple to install things, even commercially ones. Then i found Kaspersky Anti Spam 3.0 which looked good. I am on trial with this software for about 4 days now and i must admit that i am quite unhappy, at least today. Even though its analysis sounds very detailed and sophisticated, it fails short dramatically.
First i have not found a way to train this beast. Of course this thinking only occurs when you think it must be trained. It even has problems with picture-text spam. Today i got an email with 0% real content but a picture with text. One would assume that this is an easy catch for a pro tool. And to top it, this picture was linked to a spammer ad site. How hard can it be to detect this? Then we have some of those word variation subject spams like "my PHAfbrRMA" together with some text and a link inside the mail. This sort of "pharma" spams are really common these days and despite of the fact that this tool also check some kaspersky servers for current spam pattern, it doesnt catch these very emails.
All in all its a good example of a terrible software which is not worth its monthly fee. Its hard to believe that a simple Bayesian client plugin outperforms a server side tool backed by a big security company but i can prove it.
UPDATE: I just noticed that kaspersky blacklisted my trial key after 3 days of testing. This is most likely the reason why spam coming through now. I will have to check that. I got the trial key directly from the german Kaspersky office. Thats what i call a major presale desaster....
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