Anti-Spam Technology

The Dom Post has an article on five NZers who have set up a firm which is “able to block all spam”.

This gets me somewhat curious. Firstly I should say that I praise anyone who is helping offer solutions to the spam problem, and also those who set up their own business. Good on them.

But I query a claim of “blocking all spam”. Quite simply it is not possible unless you are offering a service which blocks all e-mail from unknown recepients. You can get 99.99% blocking but I know of no-one who claims 100%. Also the more you aim for 100% the more false positives you get.

The other thing which raises slight warning bells is their claim that their system is better because rather than just filter spam, it bounces it back to the sender. As most spam is forged this just results in innocent third parties or their ISPs getting pelted with bounce messages.

Like I say the company looks to be providing a good product and is doing well. But I don’t think claiming a product can block “all” spam is useful marketing.