[AccessD] OT Friday: Comodo AntiSpam

Gustav Brock Gustav at cactus.dk
Fri Aug 10 13:12:14 CDT 2007


Hi Jim

Well, not exactly. This is one of many setups using SpamAssassin which downloads _all_ mail including spam, reads and "learns" from it and maintains a large database. That process is CPU dependant which means it will choke under heavy load. 
That will not happen with SpamBunker which monitors the communication from the sending SMTP server and only downloads good mail. Thus, spam is not even downloaded, and it can easily with modest hardware keep more than 100 connections alive. Also, it causes _no_ "false positives" which frees you from one more boring task.

For a small setup not under attack, SpamAssassin on a decent machine will do a fine job.

/gustav

>>> accessd at shaw.ca 10-08-2007 19:41 >>>
Gustav:

Another possibility is to use an old 'beater' box and run a Linux solution
on it... Like: http://www.mailscanner.info/. It would use the same
configuration that is recommended with the 'Spambunker' solution.

Even with an appropriate contribution it can also be very inexpensive.

Jim 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com 
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 7:06 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com 
Subject: [AccessD] OT Friday: Comodo AntiSpam

Hi JC et al

JC has sent this out, so now you cannot get to him directly. Aside the good
intentions behind doing so, this will cause a lot of trouble, and I don't
say too much if I - as a general warning - mention that the consensus
between system people is, that as tempting these challenge-response system
my seem, they represent a bad idea because the negative impact outweighs the
positive.

If you or your client run a mail server, I can strongly recommend
SpamBunker:

http://www.aimconsulting.ch/Spambunker/sbk-strategy.asp 

which is not free but cheap, and is superior to the common mail filtering
systems. Thus, it requires no "learning", no maintenance, it works from the
minute it is installed, and it handles massive amount of spam and/or mail
even on modest hardware. We operate it here where we went from about 4000
spam mails per day to a handful per week after we had been under a week long
attack with constantly 20 connections and more than 16000 connections per
day.

As a result we now promote this to our clients with serious spam troubles.

/gustav





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