Posted by: admin in Untagged on Apr 14, 2009
by Steve Swaney
After ten years in the anti-spam business, I’ve come to realize that what email users and administrators really want is not exactly what the typical anti-spam software provides or delivers.
E-mail users and administrators simply want using email to be exactly like it was in 1995, before spam and malicious emails became the problem they are today. In those days, you simply used email and didn’t need to spend hours cleaning out junk out of your inbox, or searching through spam quarantines looking for “trapped by mistake” messages or waste hours tracking down a message that never arrived.
Administrators didn’t waste time maintaining anti-spam systems, working with users to white and blacklist email senders or hours trying to find lost messages. Email worked correctly most of the time and if it didn’t, no one panicked, they just sent a fax. More users in 1995 were aware of the fact that email was not and never would be a “guaranteed” delivery methodology.
Best of all, email was a relatively inexpensive way to communicate.
Many Mail Transport programs were (and many still are) free. There were also free or relatively inexpensive programs for users to receive, send, store and read mail with. It was not necessary to spend $10 to $20 per year per mailbox just to keep them relatively free of spam, viruses and phishing schemes.
We recognized these facts years ago and since then we’ve tried to develop email scanning applications that are as invisible and unobtrusive as possible. For systems and email administrators we simplified the installation, configuration and maintenance of our anti-spam software lineup. All of our new products can be installed from the Internet in minutes and are ready to use with sensible defaults and minor configuration changes. We also supply administrators with the tools to track messages, solve delivery problems and also back them up with the best support in the business.
For the end users, we’ve created the most accurate anti-spam software available. This means that almost no white and black listing is necessary for most users. It also means that there will be less spam, fewer messages trapped by mistake and there is no need for quarantines.
Email quarantines are simply a headache for both users and administrators. They create an additional email directory to waste time checking and a place for good emails to be missed or lost. Our BarricadeMX software never quarantines a message. It either delivers the message, or returns the message to the sender with clear instructions on why the message was not delivered and what to do to solve the problem.
BarricadeMX can even be configured to allow legitimate senders to white list themselves with no help required from support at the receiving site.
And BarricadeMX is the most efficient cost effective email scanning software available period. There is never a per mailbox charge for using our products.
We’ve come a long way towards making our customers email experience more like that of 1995 than 2009, but not a single customer seems to be upset with this return to the “old” ways.