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Lee Gomes, a tech writer at The Wall Street Journal, wrote about his recent accuracy problems using Postini, an anti-spam product, in his article entitled “Real Message About Spam“. An information technology department policy prevented him from reviewing the messages that were being identified as spam, but a recent reprieve of the policy had him shocked at the number of false positives that he was receiving. A false positive in anti-spam terms is an e-mail message that was mistakenly identified as spam. For most anti-spam products, this means that the message goes unread by the intended recipient, resulting in a communication failure.

Gomes determined that 46% of the messages in his quarantine were false positives, blocking 20% of the e-mail sent to him by readers of his column. Gomes and his colleagues were understandably upset. Unfortunately this is a common experience when using most anti-spam products. It’s understandable to have a policy against reviewing e-mail that was identified as spam. After all, Gomes’s employer is paying a few pennies a month for an anti-spam product to save from paying Gomes hundreds of dollars to read spam. If Gomes is going to read the spam, he might as well read it in his inbox, and not use an anti-spam product. However, it’s very important to use an accurate anti-spam product for this type of policy to actually pay off.

Using an inaccurate anti-spam product can actually result in costing a company more money than not using any anti-spam product. Since the product isn’t accurate enough, Gomes obviously has to actually read his spam as he did before. The difference is that it likely takes him longer to review the spam because it’s no longer in his inbox. He actually has to go somewhere else to read it. Additionally, he’s more likely to miss the legitimate e-mail messages in the pile of spam simply because he may not take the time to go through his quarantine as regularly as he does his inbox. Most organizations will also spend time tracking down missing e-mail and lose business due to the breakdown in communication that this causes.

“The anti-spam software at my shop is provided by Postini, and we can assume it’s at least as good as anyone else’s…” writes Gomes. This is perhaps one of the most illuminating things that I read in the article. It shows how many Postini users assume that a historically inaccurate product is likely just as good as any other. In reality, all anti-spam products are not the same. Unfortunately, many anti-spam product users assume that any anti-spam product is a good as another and often change anti-spam products on a whim.

It’s unfortunately quite common in the industry for some anti-spam companies to offer free desktop antivirus software or some other item of perceived value if you switch to that company’s anti-spam product. Don’t fall for the gimick. If your organization needs a desktop antivirus product, then find the best desktop antivirus product and a vendor for it. Your organization doesn’t have to choose the same vendor for both products, and doing so is rarely a good idea unless mediocre results are desired.

It’s also quite common for organizations to hire a new IT manager or a new IT services provider and start getting pressured to switch anti-spam products. Often it’s because the “new guy” has a preference for a vendor, the preference for only dealing with a single vendor, or the fact that the kickbacks are better with the “preferred” product. You should consider accepting this change if you actually are getting poor accuracy and customer service with your current anti-spam product. However, a good manager or IT services provider doesn’t cause needless disruption simply due to a personal preference or kickbacks.

The third most common cause for switching anti-spam products is when a company’s third party hosted e-mail services provider starts offering “free” anti-spam. Due to pressure from its customers, or in order to save their e-mail servers from the load of processing the 80% of all e-mail that is spam, many web and e-mail hosting providers are now including the cheapest anti-spam product that they can license. Due to the low margins in e-mail hosting, providers can’t afford to offer a premium ant-spam product, and often simply block spam based on historically inaccurate IP reputation systems. We don’t know of any e-mal hosting provider that includes a premium anti-spam solution that doesn’t charge extra for the anti-spam service. If you blindly select the premium anti-spam product that your e-mail host offers, you could be locked into receiving anti-spam services from the vendor that offered the best value to the e-mail host, rather than the anti-spam product that was the best for your company. It’s better to shop around and possibly include the e-mail host’s premium anti-spam product offering in your options. Additionally, if your e-mal host has included a “free” anti-spam product, you’re better off asking if you can opt out of using that product, as you will have accuracy problems that will cost you more money than it will save.

Many organizations switch anti-spam products and discover on their own that they’re not all the same. If your organization has made a move in the wrong direction, don’t be afraid to go back. If the move is in the right direction, don’t stop until you have a positive return on investment. A positive ROI is where money invested in something earns more in gains than the money invested. For example a $25 investment in a wheelbarrow can save some organizations thousands of dollars in labor or medical expenses. While there is an initial investment that costs the organization money, the wheelbarrow immediately starts saving labor expenses once it is put to work and it will usually pay for itself after only a few hours by exponentially increasing work output. Many small investments in efficiency will save your organization exponentially more money than they cost.

Don’t just look at the price of your anti-spam product, but rather at the cost. A balanced or positive return is what you’re looking for. An accurate anti-spam product will save your users from having to review the spam that is identified, give your users trust in the product, and save your users actual time each day that they would have otherwise spent reviewing the spam or tracking down missing e-mail. Since you pay your users salaries, this time saved is where paying for an accurate anti-spam product actually results in a positive ROI. Not using an anti-spam product will always result in a loss. Using an inaccurate anti-spam product will just increase the size of the loss.