Joe Halbrook wrote:
> Backlist-based solutions are a pathetic answer to the spam problem.
> Why? Because they are not maintained in a timely manner, are extremely
> dynamic in nature, and for the reason Justin mentions below.
>
> It's like shooting at moving targets with a muzzle loader.
> It's a losing proposition.
>
> Whitelist-based solutions are the only way to go. "Everything
> is unwanted email - unless I say it isn't by whitelisting it." It costs
> you a little in time, up-front, but well worth the investment over time.
>
> Might as well bite the bullet now. You'll be ahead of the game in
> just a few weeks.
>
> Joe Halbrook
> http://CleanMyMailbox.com
>

Whitelists aren't a workable solution for business. Pretty much by
definition most of the email you want the most (from new/potential
customers) comes from email addresses you don't yet know.

In my experience content filters simply don't work. They rarely stop
spam (spammers run their messages through the common ones before sending
and tune them to have the best possible chance of getting through) but
have a very high false positive rate. At work I get about 150 mails a
day. When the content filter stops a message believing it to be spam it
sends the recipient a message saying it has been stopped, stating who
the sender was and the subject line, so they can ask to have it released
if it's a mail they want/need. Based on that it has *never* stopped a
spam message but frequently stops legitimate messages.

Blocklists may be an imperfect solution but they are a lot less
imperfect than the alternatives. Some blocklists are maintained well
and in a timely manner, they are reactive but they can react fairly
quickly. For now they're the best we've got.

Stephen