Spam in the Wild, The Sequel

This time, we tested (almost) everyone.

By Joel Snyder
Network World, 12/20/04

Original Article on Network World Web Site

How big can a test get? We found out with our latest in-depth look at the anti-spam industry. Spam is still a huge problem, and there is an equally large market opportunity to fix it.

We invited every anti-spam vendor in our online Buyer's Guide to participate. While we expected to get eight to 10 vendors to sign up, 41 showed up. We tested them all for spam catch rate (including false-positive and false-negative rates), and performance and throughput (see charts).

Then we let the products speak for themselves. Out of the 36 that made it through the first round, we felt any product with a greater-than-90% spam catch rate and lower-than-1% false-positive rate should get a more in-depth evaluation. We still ended with a dozen excellent finalists, reflecting the growing maturity and commoditization of anti-spam products.