Cox.net Email Spam Filter
Category: Tech...
Posted Monday, March 07, 2005 at 11:11 AM [GMT-6]

I've been testing Cox Communications' email spam filter for about a week and I must say that I'm quite impressed. Cox uses Symantec's BrightMail antispam software which claims an effectiveness of 95% and, more important (to me, anyway), yields false positives on less than 1 message per million. (A false positive means that a valid message is flagged as spam, while a false negative means that a spam message is flagged as a valid message. The former is more troublesome if you're concerned about missing important messages. The combined false positives and negatives yield the measure of effectiveness.) InfoWorld published a review of BrightMail and its competitors; BrightMail had zero false positives in the InfoWorld test, the only product to achieve this result.

I've been reluctant to activate server-based filtering because of the fear of false positives, and the feeling that I've lost control over my mailbox. As with many of you, email isn't just a luxury...it's an integral part of my business, and I can't afford to lose messages.

But the email spam problem has grown to the point where my homegrown spam rules aren't getting the job done and I'm now willing to assume a miniscule risk. Since activating the filter feature that flags potential spam as such without deleting it, I've yet to spot a false positive, and the test has covered almost 2,000 messages. If this trend continues for another week, I'm going to pull the switch all the way and let Cox delete anything flagged as spam before it gets to me.

If you're a Cox customer and you've not investigated this free service, I recommend that you do so. If you're not using Cox as your ISP, your provider may still be using the BrightMail software and you should check it out. A daily time savings of even five minutes adds up to a significant productivity enhancement very quickly.