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30 Million Spam Emails a Year

essexboy
Grafter
Posts: 25
Registered: ‎01-04-2008

30 Million Spam Emails a Year


That, assuming Postini is anywhere near close to rejecting 98% at "The Edge", is the number[1] of spam emails being sent to one (my) Force9 domain alone.
Not for a moment do I believe the number of spam emails targeted at my domain is as high as that, instead I think that Postini is not achieving anything close to the contracted 98%.
I am not a fan of the Delete and Ignore approach to dealing with spam and thus not an automatic supporter of The Postini Way.  I do however see that rejection at the edge has a part to play in the overall fight against the criminals who try to spoil our lives and can see why others might feel it is a good thing. Dealing with a few thousand rejection notifications may well cause some to consider that their machines may be a part of a botnet which may in turn encourage them to do something about it.  How successful this is you could argue for ever but even a small success is a success and we should all be grateful for it.  For this reason I was happy to sit back and give Postini a go.
Well I have sat back and given Postini a go and my conclusion is that it isn't working. Not fit for purpose is the term which springs to mind.
It is difficult for me to draw accurate conclusions from what has happened, I only have my own experiences and those that a very few others have bothered to make public to go on.  I have followed the threads here and elsewhere regarding The Postini Trial and problems associated with it and from it conclude that Postini is the wrong tool.  Worse still Plusnet seem unable to exercise any real control over it.
That Postini is not working is one thing, the apparent lack of control by Plusnet is something else altogether and does concern me.  I would imagine that the whole idea of the exercise from the point of view of Plusnet was to shift the primary business of spam control somewhere cheaper and at the same time improve it. Dealing with the ever growing tide of spam must cost them and by association all of us a small fortune. That done I get the distinct impression they have no real control over Postini at all and far from making the job at Plusnet easier and our inboxes emptier the reverse has happened.  We see a situation now where Postini appear to be arbitrarily patching and changing their systems on what seems like a daily basis to no good effect. In turn Plusnet look like they are running around forever trying to keep up with these changes and as a consequence having to introduce a whole new raft of user controls for us to "tweek" the ever changing newly patched systems.  While all this is going on spam email is continuing to arrive in what seems like ever growing numbers and non spam email is, in many cases, not arriving at all.  However it is measured this is not right.
What can be done about it?
All in all probability very little, I suspect we the Plusnet customers are stuck with Postini whether we like it or not.  I do feel that we are also being used as Guinea Pigs in a grander scheme of things.  While I can do little but sit, squeek, scratch behind my ears and look endearing I do hope that some decision makers somewhere take note and make sure that Postini is not even on the list for consideration when matters such as these are discussed in the future.

[1] Because of current wild day on day variations a little difficult to pin down exactly but the figures suggest somewhere between 20 million and 50 million a year and rising.
2 REPLIES 2
shermans
Pro
Posts: 1,303
Thanks: 101
Fixes: 3
Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Re: 30 Million Spam Emails a Year

An intersting post, but it does not reflect my experience at all.  Maybe that should be a warning to me.
All I can say is that prior to the introduction of Postini, I was beleaguered by spam.  But gradually over the weeks, sp
driveconsultant
Grafter
Posts: 164
Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: 30 Million Spam Emails a Year

I partly agree. Since Postini I have had a lot less spam in my mailboxes, but many more false positives that I or PlusNet are unable to control. I gave up on sending these to the notspam address after I discovered that these are pretty much ignored by Postini.
A little more alarmingly, a few more spams are now getting through undetected, which makes me think that Postini are losing the war. The worst of both worlds.
Perhaps it will be better when the cream custard whitelisting feature arrives?