MR: Webmail spam filters.

Having had a chance to use Gmail for a few months now I have observed
the quality of the various spam filters oon each of my mail accounts.

My past mail accounts were with NTL and PlusNet. NTL was a complete spam
magnet, and attracted up to 250 spams a day, the filter wasn't bad, but
I usually had to manually filter a dozen or so each day. PlusNet was not
as bad at attracting spam, but their filter didn't work well; leaving a
good third of the spam in my inbox.

Currently I have Wanadoo, SpamCop and Gmail. To take these in order:

Wanadoo is pants, like the NTL account it attracts a couple of hundred
spams a day. It's not bad a filtering, only one or two slip through the
net. I can't tell if any genuine messages get filtered now, as I don't
use the account any more - a few genuine ones did get filtered while I
was using it though. It was reliable enough though, despite a few quirks
in its design.

SpamCop is good, but is paid for, which now brings in the element of
value. Up until recently I thought it a good account, filtering about
90% of my junk. However, after three years of use, it still hasn't
improved its filtering, and I regularly get spam passing through the
system - particularly the oriental ones that aren't even in an English
character set. It doesn't attract too much spam though, I would guess
the domain name helps there :-)

Gmail (now Googlemail in the UK) is, so far, excellent. Despite the Beta
badge, it has been a revelation for spam filtering. I never see a spam
reaching my pop inbox, and after a month of training I haven't had a
genuine message filtered either. The occasional spam gets through, but
only once a week or so, although it doesn't attract any more spam than
the SpamCop account. The service is reliable too, although it does have
the occasional outage while they update the system.

In summary, I find that Gmail is now good enough that I am not going to
renew my SpamCop subscription this year, compared to the filters in
Gmail it just isn't good value any more. Wanadoo is a gonna anyway, I
only keep that running until I manage to change all my senders details.
Indeed, I haven't even bothered separating my personal and Internet mail
addresses, it's been good enough to use just one account for everything.

--
Andy Hewitt ** FAF#1, (Ex-OSOS#5) - FJ1200 ABS
Windows free zone (Mac G5 Dual Processor)
<http://andyhewitt.webhop.net/>
(updated Nov. 2005)
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