If you have any questions please send them to staff@zaks.com

(If you just want to know what to do - CLICK HERE.)

In light of the recent increases in spam and types of spam we're now handling we researched what others where using and conducted our own hands on test.

For the test we set up 7 different email accounts/systems. Here is the list:

1. An account with no filtering used as the control account.
2. ASSP - an email filter devloped by the open software community - available from sourceforge.net.
3. Declude - a filter by a company of the same name. We've been using a version of declude for over 3 years.
4. Gmail - Googles email system with built in spam filtering.
5. Spamcop - from a company that has been producing anti spam software since 1998.
6. Smartmail - an email system that includes a web based email interface - a competitor to Imail.
7. Spambayes - an add-in software program for Outlook, Outlook Express and others.

Imail is the program we have been using for over 10 years as our email system - the spam filtering contained in Imail is not very good and therefor not considered.

We repeated the test multiple times - clearing out all systems each time. The test ran for about 2 1/2 days each time. The Control account received at least 250 emails for each test. Here are the results:

Setup number 7 - the Spambays add-in needs to be trained - that means you install it and then you mark each email either good (ham) or bad (spam). We did this for the first few tests and put almost 1,000 emails through the filter. Based on average emails received by our customers this would be the equivilant of about 2 weeks of training. We decided that if it took more than that it was pretty much out of the running - most of us wouldn't have the patience for doing it much longer than that.

Setup 5 - Spamcop - is a service at $30/year. We're not sure what they use as a filtering program but it performed just a touch better than the Spambayes (#7) after the training.

Setup 3 - the Declude we we're using for the past few years is no longer a supported product. The new version is no longer sold as just a spam filter, it's tied into a bundle package with other programs that we don't want.

Setup 2 (assp), 4(gmail) and 6(smartmail) ran very close out of the box. I would be comfortable recommending any of them - if that was what was needed - a don't touch out of the box solutions. But - that isn't what we wanted and each of these, with some tweaking, could peform much better. Overall we've chosen number 6 and number 2. Not based on their equal out of the box performance but the way they can be tweaked and their other included features.

Setup 2 - ASSP - is what we've chosen to put on for our existing mail system. Some of the reasons that made this a better choice are:

• If you're using Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora or anything but web mail each person you send mail to will be automatically added to the whitelist and they won't be considered spam. To take advantage of this you don't have to do anything - it's know.
• You're email address stays the same.
• Each of our users can send spam to ASSP to help further the fine tuning.
• You get an easy way to check your spam to make sure nothing that isn't spam got caught by some filter system.
• Those that are in charge of your domains mail system don't have to learn anything new to get the advantages of the filtering.

Setup 6 - Smatermail - we have also implemented this as a mail system choice for our customers. It uses a built in spam filter called Spam Assasin. It performed as well as ASSP and Gmail. The reasons for the choice:

• Smartermail is geared toward web mail usrs - the web mail interface for both users and administrators is greatly enhanced - it looks/works very similar to Outlook.
• It has a very simple interface for further training of good and bad emails.

Setup 4 - Gmail - this option work well - like 2 and 6 - it was basically the same as Smatermail but - your email address at some point will have yourname.gmail.com in it. It also is introducing a 3rd party that is free to do what ever they want with the business or the way it operates. (Don't say it won't happen - Apple did this with their "Free Email For Life"). We didn't feel this was a way our customers would want to go.

So after all this I'm sure some of you are saying - "Great, but we've still got tons of spam!". You've probably noticed that much of your email (hopefully only spam) is coming in with "SPAM-" in front of the subject. This is supposed to be there - this is how you will remove most of the spam from your life. There is a step you need to do - add a filter to move this spam from your good mail to either a junk mail folder or to have it deleted.

If you have OUTLOOK (NOT EXPRESS):

1. In Outlook, at the top menu click TOOLS.
2. then click RULES AND ALERTS.
3. then NEW RULE
4. then START FROM BLANK RULE (older versions may not have this, but go to the next step)
5. then CHECK MESSAGES WHEN THEY ARRIVE then click NEXT
6. then check WITH SPECIFIC WORDS IN THE SUBJECT
7. click on SPECIFIC WORDS in the bottom box. Type in SPAM- then hit ADD, OK, NEXT.
8. then check MOVE TO SPECIFIED FOLDER
9. click SPECIFIED, NEW and enter "JUNK MAIL", then OK, OK, FINISHED.
10. Click OK to close the Rules and Alerts - You're done.

If you have OUTLOOK EXPRESS:

1. In Outlook Express, at the top menu click TOOLS.
2. then MESSAGE RULES, MAIL.
3. In box 1 check WHERE THE SUBJECT LINE CONTAINS SPECIFIC WORDS
4. In box 2 check MOVE IT TO THE SPECIFIED FOLDER
5. In box 3 click on CONTAINS SPECIFIC WORDS, enter SPAM- then hit ADD, OK.
6. Then in box 3 click SPECIFIED FOLDER, NEW FOLDER, enter JUNK MAIL, click OK, OK, OK, OK.
7. You're done.

If you have another mail program the method will be similar, but check your help file for details.

If you're using our WEB MAIL:

1. From the drop down (top right) choose FILTERS, then ADD.
2. In the SELECT FIELD drop down choose SUBJECT, then click CONTAINS and in the PHRASE box type SPAM-
3. Then click ADD CONDITION.
4. At the bottom in the DESTINATION put JUNK MAIL and click FINISH.
5. You're done.

Now all mail that comes in with "SPAM-" in the subject will be automatically moved to the JUNK MAIL folder. We recommend that before you delete the spam from the junk folder that you browse through it to make sure nothing good got caught.

If receive and email that is spam but is not marked so - FOWARD it to SPAM@SPAMFILTER.ZAKS.COM. It will be added to the training system. This is a common system for all users so the more we train it, the better it will work.

If you send something to the spamfilter that IS NOT spam you can remove it by sending it to NOTSPAM@SPAMFILTER.ZAKS.COM.

If when going through your JUNK MAIL you find something that is marked as spam but IS NOT, foward a copy to NOTSPAM@SPAMFILTER.ZAKS.COM.

As we said above, as you send mail out those you send to are added to the WHITELIST. You can also send emails directly to the white list by sending an email to WHITELIST@SPAMFILTER.ZAKS.COM.

And you can remove someone from the whilte list by sending the email to WHITELISTREMOVE@SPAMFILTER.ZAKS.COM.

For help on this you can send an email to SPAMHELP@SPAMFILTER.ZAKS.COM and the spam filter will send you help.

This new spam filter is currently blocking over 85% of the email that comes to us AFTER over 75% is removed by our first line filter - basically over 95% of the email coming to us is spam.

A few more comments - spam filters consider spam to be totally unsolicited spam from most always non-legitimate sources. For example - I purchase books from Amazon and now I get emails from them with "special offers" - I consider this spam but the spam filters do not - I signed up with Amazon and I'm sure in their small print I agreed to accept it. The same thing with some of the tech sites we visit - almost every place you go to that asks for an email address will at some point send you "special offers", "news letters", "updates" and so on - THIS IS NOT SPAM. You can almost always find something in their email that will let you unsubscribe to their offers - BUT VERY IMPORTANT - only reply to what you ARE SURE are legitimate sites. If you are not sure - DON' T.

AND - if you send something that is UNWANTED but not spam - like an email from a legitimate mailing list - to the spamfilter - you'll create problems for those trying to send email to those that do want it.

Like we created a filter above - you can create a filter to catch the UNWANTED emails and move them to junk or delete them.

If you have any questions please EMAIL them to us at staff@zaks.com.

Thank you,

Staff.

P.S. - Quck Instructions - Make a rule that cathes all email with SPAM- in the subject and send it to a junk folder. And if you don't get this - go back up and read the whole thing.