Spam Filters (Continued)

Last week i slammed Postini for having a system that allowed spammers to route spam around them. Then later in the day i posted a short post that showed how they were able to stop this from happening. It’s not an issue with their architecture, its an issue with the way we set up their system (and the way a lot of other companies did too).

I have gained a lot of respect for Postini in this whole process. I think they may be the best spam filtering software out there. They are certainly the most popular with businesses and i have heard that after AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN, they are the fourth largest recipient of email in the world. That’s because the filter so much spam for ISPs and enterprises.

They have an incredibly hard job. I think its going to get harder, not easier, in the near future as spammers try ever more clever ways to get their mail through.

I had an email exchange with their CEO yesterday and i got a sense of how hard they are working to try to keep their customers happy. I told him that customer communication/service will most likely become the most important part of his business as the way customers use the filter may have to start changing over time in response to changing behavior of spammers. That’s what has happened in the virus world, and i see the same thing playing out in the spam world.

It’s really too bad that the great thing about the Internet – it’s openness – is also the thing that allows these nut jobs who send spam and make viruses to thrive.