Re: False positives (was Re: [Asrg] Re: RMX Records)

On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Alan DeKok wrote:

> > Automatic filters will get you so far, maybe up to 90-98% accuracy,
> > depending on which filter you use and what your mail mix looks like.

>   Automatic filters only work if you're not receiving any significant
> amount of spam.

Delegation is the key.  You delegate spam handling down to the level
that minimizes your cost.  It's not cost-effective for a few people to
handle 100K spams.  It's not cost effective for 20,000 end-users to
handle 50 spams each.  It's probably cheapest for 1000 department-level
clerical people to deal with 1,000 spams each.

Note that you cannot eliminate the cost of dealing with spam.  But
you can minimize it.

>   If you're receiving 100K+ spams a day, then the machines to run the
> filters cost a fair amount of money.

Nah.  If you're receiving that kind of mail volume, you have big
machines with under-utilized CPUs anyway.  Content-scanning just uses
up CPU cycles that would be wasted.  Nik Clayton says he filters
2 million messages/day with SpamAssassin; I'd be amazed if fewer
than 100K of those are spam.

>   With the spam volume Chris Lewis is saying Nortel gets, I'd be
> surprised if their infrastructure costs were less than $100K.
> Large companies can afford that.  Small ones can't.

Small companies don't get 100K spams/day.

--
David.
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