How do you Stop Spam, Viruses and Phishing?

2nd September 2006

To say “spam is out of control” is not really accurate, so let me give you some figures that will put it in perspective.

For my own domain pdxtc.com, August 2006 brought me these numbers…

• 19,306 total incoming emails (and we only have 9 addresses!)
• 16,209 were identified and blocked as spam before a human ever saw them
• 102 of those blocked contained viruses
• 71 of those that were blocked contained “phishing” attacks
• Only 15.15%, (2,924) of the emails were deemed “legitimate”
• Of the “legitimate” emails that made it through, I can only guess at the number I’d have been better off without seeing!

In the past, I have recommended SpamArrest (and I still do) for users that have only 5 email addresses or less, and it’s still one of the best in my opinion, since you can block 100% of all the cr*p with a simple one time auto response, asking “are you human?” to the sender .

That’s not practical for a business that wants to protect it’s whole domain. The “user verification” option is fine for persinal mail, isn’t really acceptable in a corporate environment, and you need something more robust.

I have payed a monthly fee for years to protect my whole domain with Securence, and I’ve been very happy with it, practically never getting any “false positives” blocking mail that I want. however, in the past month I’ve had to go into my “quarantine” folder on their server four times looking for email that I was expecting, which turned out to be blocked.

Perhaps I’m a bit premature considering changing, but I thought I’d throw it out here…What mail management methods do you use to maintain your sanity?