As a web host or ISP what do you think is best to do? do spam/virus filtering, or don't touch mail and let the user do what they want with it? (no chance of false positives, or lost mail, this way)

I work for an ISP and we have a barracuda and we get tons of calls from customers regarding lost mail and such as when you're filtering such a large varitey of mail its very hard to have a "perfect" filter. Mail that a car dealership gets and what a hospital get is totally different, for example.

Also in terms of web hosting the filtering will put a reasonable load on the server during peak spamming hours.
So just curious, as a ISP/webhost customer do you think your host should do filter or do you rather manage that yourself?

We generally leave it up to the client for SPAM filtering. Virus scanning should be done as any files left on the servers can infect the server itself.

Hi Red,

There is general difference between large and small/medium isps/webhosters. The smaller ones (up to a say 5-10k domains) tend to opt for a professional spamfilter for their premium clients (standard) and resell spamfiltering to other clients on request. This also holds for the very small hosters (< 1k domains) - they basically only add spamfiltering on demand of the customer.

Larger ISPS all tend to go for professional spamfiltering options these days. Not yet all have a good system in place but there is a definite trend of going there. Why? Actually, spamfiltering becomes more and more reliable and users have still good control over their mailflows without it costing heaps the way it was a few years ago for the larger volume ISPs...

Hope that helps!
Cheers

We do some part of the spam filters, but not too strict so as to avoid having any false positives, if customers want stricter, we normally recommend them to install another anti spam software in their local machines.

You know some of the customers prefer sort out tons of emails to avoid loosing any email that might be important for them. And some of them asking about in in they presales questions.

If you are a hoster/ISP, having spam filters at your gateway is getting more and more important. Incoming spam is not only an inconvenience to your clients, but a major liability to your network.

Alot of incoming spam will bounce off or be forwarded to other service providers by your cliens' mailboxes, causing your IPs to be blacklisted by large ISPs such as Comcast, Yahoo or Hotmail.

On the otherhand, any spamfiltering system should allow spam to be quarantined and give the customer the ability to remove it and install a 3rd party spamfiltering system.

We generally leave it up to the client for SPAM filtering. Virus scanning should be done as any files left on the servers can infect the server itself.

Unless your server runs Windows and you're actually executing the virus on the server (which you shouldn't be doing), it's not going to get infected just because there are virus-infected files in the mailstore.

Spam filtering software installed locally is no match for a 3rd party company who specializes in it. Consider Postini.com, these guys work day and night revising their algorithims to deal with spam.. Their website will tell you more.

In the old days, installing Spam Assassin was all you had to do. Spammers are more creative these days, so unless you want to tweak your locally installed software every hour, I recommend you find a 3rd party spam solution.

In the old days, installing Spam Assassin was all you had to do. Spammers are more creative these days, so unless you want to tweak your locally installed software every hour, I recommend you find a 3rd party spam solution.

Yes, Spam Assassin is not realistic when we're talking about the amount of traffic the OP is referring to.

With a barracuda you can opt to have it tag spam/quarantine instead of delete it so why don't you guys do that?

We use ASSP, it simply apllyes the TAG [SPAM] to the emails, and the costumer have the option to white ot blacklist the email.