Why rip out the old filters?

[#1]

There is little doubt that it was Plusnet's error earlier in the year which attracted most of the spam that I am receiving. The spam filtering in place did a pretty good job, although I still had to check all of it to pick up a few important messages that were wrongly labelled spam.
I would have been quite happy to opt into Postini if it had passed all the tests and been declared successful, but I couldn't see why I should opt into the trial of an unproved product. Then, suddenly, the old filtering was ripped out, letting floods of spam through.
In my view Plusnet should not have removed the old filtering until it was ready to recommend the new filter as a satisfactory improvement. I have now opted in, but it seems that I might have to wait a week before I get it installed.
Plusnet seems only able to move from one catastrophe to another. Please, will someone think of the customers and their experience.

[#2]

Quote

Then, suddenly, the old filtering was ripped out

The only filtering that has been removed is the Critical Path boxes, these were also on a trial. We haven't removed any other spam solutions from the platform.

[#3]

They have not ripped out the old system - DSPAM is still in place doing it's usual ineffectual job!
They had a time limited trial (around 6 weeks I think) of Criticalpath hardware which has now been removed. This did pretty well - but is not a patch on Postini.
Every year there is an increase in spam i the run up to Christmas - you are seeing the levels of spam you would have been seeing without Criticalpath ever being introduced.
The DSPAM system is very slow to react to new tricks the spammers come up with - recently they have taken to running the words together with capitals at the start of each word - these seem to still be getting past DSPAM untagged - Postini is treating them in the right way.

[#4]

If you'll forgive the fairly obvious point, of course it is unproven. That is the whole point of a trial. If you wish you can opt in to the trial to help test it, but you don't have to. Once the trial is complete it will be proven, one way or the other.

[#5]

Denzil,
We now have over 100,000 customer mail accounts on the Postini platform and we're fairly comfortable that the success criteria have been met. At the moment Postini's blocking around 10% of all mail destined for our mail platform and feedback is good amongst trialists.
All Free Online customers (ie. non-trialists) now have their email routed through the Postini anti-spam proxy along with a few heavily spammed users and several thousand dormant accounts that haven't been touched in over a year.

[#6]

Hi, how long does it take for Postni to be enabled on an account. I applied on sun and haven't had any reply yet. Frankly I am appalled at the amount of obscene mail +net is letting through. Are they not aware, or care, about a duty of responsibilty to protect minors from such e-mails?
Chris
Moderators note by James_H : Removed full quote of previous post - its not needed at all

[#7]

Quote from: Bob

Denzil, All Free Online customers (ie. non-trialists) now have their email routed through the Postini anti-spam proxy along with a few heavily spammed users and several thousand dormant accounts that haven't been touched in over a year.

I've not applied for the Postini trial but this seems to say that as a FreeOnline customer I have already been placed on it.  Is this true? If so, I've noticed no decrease in spam - in fact it seems to get worse day by day.

[#8]

donne, Same here, 20 emails received today (that's a lot for me), 19 were spam, it was the worst spam day of the year.
It seems going from bad to worst. (Not in the trial neither).
I don't buy the "it's the worst time of the year for spam", spam comes all year round, I think the protection implemented on email accounts right now are getting weaker and weaker.