MW Pro admits First Alert doesn't work but wants $$$ anyway

JaXx · Cadet Joined: Oct 20, 2002 Posts: 7 Location: Nepal

Mailwasher sent me this reply to my email where they more or less admit that first alert doesn't work, but they have to charge for it b/c its expensive to operate!!! Can you believe that!? They also imply that it will work better in the future, so we should pay for it now. All underlining and bold is mine, for emphasis.

"Thank you, we really appreciate your feedback.
When we first started out planning FirstAlert! we were sure it would really make a difference as spam was pretty heterogeneous, and so we built it. But spam had evolved and keeps evolving to such an extent that it has become impossible to match every spam using this digital fingerprint. We are finding we are having to also use complimentary tools to stop spam.

Given that it's quite expensive to run such a service, we need to charge for it somewhere as it is an ongoing service and there are quite large costs involved, but we will evolve it in to a service which is much more useful.

I do expect we will see a drop off initially in reporting but we'll be adding in functionality soon after to make it much more useful and more inclined for users to report. Another measure we'll use the spam database for is with Bayesian filtering. This will require training your software a little to build up a list of good and bad characteristics, the bad characteristics already being in the database will enable it to be more accurate more quickly.

Terryphi · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:33 am Post subject:

I'm going to stick with FA and I hope Firetrust do too. It already reliably detects almost 40% of spam received by me and can only get better as the user base increases. This is not the time to withdraw support for the project. Give it a chance to build up a critical mass.

Unfortunately, spammers will not be driven out of business just by the activities of anti-spam activists. Yes, with good filters we can already detect 90% of spam for ourselves but that is not the point. We need a product which will allow Jo(e) Public to effortlessly remove perhaps 75% of spam. With our continued support FA might just do that.

JaXx · Cadet Joined: Oct 20, 2002 Posts: 7 Location: Nepal

Well if FA detected 40% of my spam I might continue to support it but it only detects about 10% and that's not worth paying for, at least in my mind.

polyglory · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:16 pm Post subject:

Pancake · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:02 pm Post subject:

I have taken up an offer by my ISP for Spam filtering for A$5 per year.Only had two in a month.

Wayward · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:15 am Post subject:

stan_qaz · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 2:41 am Post subject:

My first alert stats are a bit hosed as I have had to write filters to check for spamcop blacklisting and give these priority over first alert to keep from spending time re-reporting spams that spamcop.net already has blacklisted.

I'll keep using FA but I'd be a lot happier if there was some way to see the spamcop.net status even if the spam is tagged by FA.

Spamcop.net reporting is much more effort than reporting to FA and making it simpler/faster would go a long way to getting more users to use the function. The marketing folk could use this in their continuing battle to have more features than the competitors.

Beta comment moved to the corre t forum.

Sir_Alan · Cadet Joined: Dec 21, 2003 Posts: 3 Location: UK

stan_qaz · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:50 pm Post subject:

The false positive problem in FA is actually two related problems, you find some e-mails marked that you don't believe are spam and some that would have been marked incorrectly are masked by your legit filters and friends list.

Both of these are big confidence busters, if you can't be sure how FA is performing without dropping your friends list and legit filters to check - how can you develop any confidence that it will operate correctly with new mail that you haven't been able to protect with a friend listing or legit filter?

The other key piece of the puzzle that is almost worthless without the indication above is a reporting button for false positives.

I have 95% or more of my incoming mail covered by a legit filter or the friends list so I rarely have a chance to detect a false positive without going to a major clicking effort. This masking of FA results keeps me from building confidence in the system since I rarely see its results when looking at legitimate mail.

Still within these limitations it does a good job of detecting new spams.

Ikeb · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 6:26 pm Post subject:

I agree with your assessment Stan. While FA! does do a good job but within certain limits, at this point in time I have to say that my other Spam Tools appear to yield more satisfactory results.

Since I can't be certain that FA! adds any value, I doubt that I'll be subscribing.

AbdLomax · Private Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 35 Location: USA

stan_qaz · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 11:17 pm Post subject:

One of my ISPs offers a really nice weighted spam checking system that adds to an e-mails spam score with each test it fails. You can filter based on the spam score. To see a header try searching on my user and declude.

Ikeb · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:35 am Post subject:

AbdLomax · Private Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 35 Location: USA

stan_qaz · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 10:13 pm Post subject:

Then download and run Vipul's Razor

http://sourceforge.net/projects/razor/

Vipul's Razor is a distributed, collaborative, spam detection and filtering network. The primary focus of the system is to identify and disable an email spam before its injection and processing is complete.

Might even make another good spam tool if it could be easily integrated and the license wasn't impossible to deal with.


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