Mailwasher and Spam Combat - my experience

[mike ring]

I've been trying Spamcombat for a week, and although I don't want to be
controversial, I thought I'd pass on what I'd found.

Please put the flamethrowers down, this is only my experience, it's
true, and is _only_ my opinion.

I've just imported 43 headers with m/w, 42 were spam.

It took a few seconds, Spam combat imports and analyses the whole post,
(at least, the text) and this takes several minutes.

M/w had perfectly premarked my 42 spam with only very simple rules.

Spamcombat mostly only premarks the banned DNS list (I hope I'm getting
my abbreviations right, I am NOT an expert. I thought it was not
learning, but I find it needs an absolute minimum of 10 words to even
attempt filtering, and most of my spam (nowadays) is one word subjects
from .co.jp, or .br, and they always get through. So I have to re-
premark them every time

M/w is set not to allow these origins, and I can't find out how to do
that in Spam Combat.

Spam combat still leaves me with all the messages to look through
again!! before deleting them.

My horrible conclusion is that though Spam combat appears to be a vastly
cleverer, better engineered program, giving miles more information if
you know what to do with it, mailwasher does a much better job down and
dirty manner in a fraction of the time and needs a fraction of the
brainpower to use.

I'm sure there are lots of folks with different requirements who will
find Spam combat just what they need, but I'm only speaking for myself,
on the assumption that any honest input is helpful;

so that was mine

mike

 

[Jim]

I've been trying Spamcombat for a week, and although I don't want to
...
I've just imported 43 headers with m/w, 42 were spam.

It took a few seconds, Spam combat imports and analyses the whole
post, (at least, the text) and this takes several minutes.

M/w had perfectly premarked my 42 spam with only very simple rules.

I found that with Mailwasher, I was creating rules all the time to handle
spam that wasn't coming from known blacklisted sources. With SpamCombat, it
IS learning, and it's marking suspected spam fairly accurately.

Spam combat still leaves me with all the messages to look through
again!! before deleting them.

The lack of a view filter is hurting SpamCombat, I agree. To be able to
filter out certain keywords, or based on a bayesian score threshold, would
make SpamCombat the obvious choice.

 

[Paul Blarmy]

On Sat, 22 May 2004 18:45:25 +0000 (UTC), mike ring wrote...

I've been trying Spamcombat for a week, and although I don't want to be
controversial, I thought I'd pass on what I'd found.

As a matter of interest, have you tried K9?

 

[mike ring]

I found that with Mailwasher, I was creating rules all the time to
handle spam that wasn't coming from known blacklisted sources. With
SpamCombat, it IS learning, and it's marking suspected spam fairly
accurately.

That was what bothered me - I found Spamcombat *wasn't* learning, and on
trying to find out why, I found it needed 15 words to make an
assessment, and when I tried to reduce this, it would not go below 10.

(Of course I may have missed a "learn, damn you" slap round the ear
button, but that's what I mean about software you need to be a computer
whiz to drive)

But my example of recent spam, with one random word type subjects,
usually containing just a link, I always get an undecided result from
Spam combat.

But I noticed these were all (mainly) from *.co.jp or *.com.br
(brazil?), so added two sections to my "from" rule, which only took
seconds, and now M/w premarks them all.

It's just my 2 pennorth, and I *Am* too thick for linux ;-)

mike

 

[John Fitzsimons]

I've been trying Spamcombat for a week, and although I don't want to be
controversial, I thought I'd pass on what I'd found.

< snip >

For those people who are interested. From their forums...

"In the near future the SpamCombat v2.0 will be released. The version
2.0 is planned as shareware."

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[mike ring]

On Sat, 22 May 2004 18:45:25 +0000 (UTC), mike ring wrote...


As a matter of interest, have you tried K9?

Yes, twice; it's funny, I feel sort of guilty about using mailwasher now
it's payware, but I can't find anything to touch it.

K9 has IMO the fundamental fault that it involves my email program, tho
I believe - Ive tried so many ;-) , that it now has deletion off the
server. But it's a secondary thing for "advanced" users (forgive me if
I'm talking about another prog!). And find setting the rules so
much
harder than mailwashers intuitive filter builder.

But I can tell if it's spam with certainty by the header, even though it
looks very innocuous, and the domain, and if I'm uncertain one click
brings up a preview of the body, and with a bit of experience M/w
premarks correctly 100% (plus or minus 000001%) of the time.

And just before I came on to usenet M/w fetched 27 headers, all
correctly premarked as spam, and deleted them in about one minute,
including my inspection.

When I can find a freeware prog that can do any where near as well I'll
jump on it.

PS; I wouldn't pay money, but I don't believe there's payware that comes
close to suiting me as well as M/w

But I'm not trying to convert anyone, just inputting my experience of
what suits me, and why

mike

 

[Paul Blarmy]

On Sun, 23 May 2004 08:52:13 +0000 (UTC), mike ring wrote...

Yes, twice; it's funny, I feel sort of guilty about using mailwasher now
it's payware, but I can't find anything to touch it.

K9 has IMO the fundamental fault that it involves my email program

Is Mailwasher a bit like SpamCombat in as much as it operates separately
to your email client therefore avoiding the need to change your server
settings within your email client?

If so, the one disadvantage that I see (unless I have this totally
wrong) is that once you have checked with Mailwasher, by the time you run
your email client there may be other messages just received that
Mailwasher hasn't filtered yet. Also, two operations rather than just one
when using the integration of, say, K9.

 

[mike ring]

Is Mailwasher a bit like SpamCombat in as much as it operates separately
to your email client therefore avoiding the need to change your server
settings within your email client?

Yes, it's totally separate, the only integration is that it can
automatically launch your email after processing, or manually with a button
provided

If so, the one disadvantage that I see (unless I have this totally
wrong) is that once you have checked with Mailwasher, by the time you
run your email client there may be other messages just received that
Mailwasher hasn't filtered yet.

That's true, but M/w has a "launch email button that starts your email
client, so you can do it as soon as you've cleaned the server, (if there's
any good mail on it, there rarely is on mine). So I hardly ever use my
email prog at all, and if I do it's very rare a spam sneaks in the gap.

Also, two operations rather than just one when using the integration of,
say, K9.

Ive just cleared 25 spam mails off the server, all correctly premarked, in
under a minute (btintercom's working well today)

Thats 52 in 2 mailchecks today, with change out of 2 minutes. My email prog
has not run at all, I've not got any spam anywhere on my computer, even in
quarantine, which have to be checked, just in case, and got rid of - how
many clicks does that take?

AND m/w is simple enough for the intellectually challenged to work

mike

 

[cadey]

I agree with you. I have been using mailwasher for about a month and I
really like how simple it is. About 2 weeks ago I put in some filters. Not
to me with my usual sreen name and my email mail address. It has
consistently stopped the mai that comes with only the 1st 3 or 4 digits that
match my email address but the rest of the address is junk. I also like the
blacklist the domain. I watch my mail for a few days and saw that a great
amount of my spam was coming from 2 or 3 domains. I reduced the spam I must
identify by about half. This is a good program.