Everyone is talking about a study out of Canada that aims to prove which spam filter works best. I perused the site and found the video clip. Then I walked down the street, broke into the POP on the corner, and dragged a fiber cable over to the house. Attached to a spare demuxer I had lying around, and plugged my laptop into it. I still couldn’t wait for the video to download. Damn.

The conclusion (garnered from reading between the lines) was this: some obscure little filter worked the best. Now before you run out to install it, keep in mind that we’ve heard this “lack of popularity” thing before.

The new “spam gadget” being pitched here, called Spam Cube, might be nice. It might work. Great.

But saying that…

“Most solutions are software-based and run on your PC, requiring a yearly subscription licence”

…simply isn’t correct.

Most solutions run on (or rely on) the servers processing your email. Those solutions are managed by a bunch of folks that deserve big high-fives for keeping an extra million spams from hitting your inbox each day - a million spams that a desktop solution wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of thwarting.

Next sales pitch please.

The Federal Trade Commission just completed a spam research study which indicated that spam filters work. I’d say wow, but they go on to state the even more obvious. The FTC says spammers actually harvest email addresses from public websites. We never would have guessed.

The other good news is the FTC did discover that two ISPs tested blocked between 85% and 95% of spam. The other bad news is I don’t think the FTC can actively endorse the ISPs they tested, so I doubt we will ever find out who they are. If someone does know, please clue the rest of us in.

***UPDATE***

Brian McWilliams sheds more light on the FTC’s “study”. Maybe we don’t want to know who those ISPs are, or maybe we just shouldn’t care.

This is not going to directly affect the number of pharmacy spams you get each day, but a joint initiative of Microsoft Research, the University of Washington in Seattle and Royal Perth Hospital in Australia is using antispam tools used to develop HIV fighting drugs.

The effort is using data mining technology out of Microsoft’s antispam software to map genetic mutations of the HIV virus (constant mutation is one reason why vaccines have short life spans). The mapping being done is used to add additional genetic markers to vaccines, in much the same way as spam filters use common words or phrases to weed out junk mail.

Very interesting.

It seems Verizon has been a bit aggressive with its spam filters. In fact, they are tweaked so tightly that a lot of small businesses and legitimate consumers are finding their email bouncing like beach balls.

So in come the lawyers, and out come the details.

I suspect this is going to be an interesting fight. On one hand, you have Verizon customers with a potentially legitimate complaint, and on the other you have Verizon’s need (in fact, responsibility) to stop spam from hitting the inbox. Add the fact that Verizon’s customer service department is less than friendly, and you have a receipe for a great drama.

Stay tuned.

***UPDATE***

Ethan Preston has delved a little deeper in to the Verizon issue, with some legal analysis of the class action lawsuit. Check it out.

Email appliance provider Mirapoint conducted a survey about anti-spam controls in the workplace, and found 60% of respondents claiming legtimate email was getting blocked as a result of spam filters.

According to this report, 51% said it resulted in wasted time. However, 42% of those polls whined about filters, saying that filtered email resulted in a missed deadline.

I haven’t seen the data on this survey, so I cannot opine on its statistical validity. Nevertheless, I am going to call it FUD for the lazy worker.

Using a single communications medium for all important commercial correspondence is just plain dumb, and that is what the deadline missers are insinuating. I know very few people that relay all the details of important projects via email, and still fewer that leave details they have been given in their inboxes. Furthermore, despite the conveniences that email provides, it still doesn’t substitute for the tried and trusty calendar!

I think that the folks polled are 1) pissed that they can’t use their corporate email boxes to send their friends dirty pictures with obscene captions, and 2) that they will find any excuse they can for slacking on the job, including blaming their ineptitute on technology.

I am going take a leap of faith here by speculating that the poll was targeted at government bureaucrats.