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25 Oct 2009

How do you test spam filters? Email

(Thanks to Chris Lewis for permission to adapt this)

Everyone who uses e-mail needs spam filtering, and some filters definitely work better than others. Some people we know were trying to design tests of filter quality, which turns out to be extremely difficult.

What one might call 'filtering quality' assessment, should be the very very last step after "does it have the features I want?", "does it install/is it supported/supportable?", "does it crash?", "does it make lots of stupid mistakes?", "is it likely going to compare favorably with what we already have?".

You have to do the latter before the former. The latter is relatively easy. The former is what people keep asking about, and is the really really hard part to do right.

See more ...


posted at: 00:24 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Trackback link is http://jl.ly/Email/filtertest.trackback


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Who is this guy?

Airline ticket info

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Other blogs

CAUCE
The AARP Are Spamming Again
23 days ago

Box of Meat
RIP JD Falk
78 days ago

A keen grasp of the obvious
Tourtière around the world
29 days ago

Related sites

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

IRTF Anti-Spam Research Group

Network Abuse Clearinghouse



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