How Being the "Little Guy" Makes SpamButcher a Better Product

Microsoft is in the process of releasing three new products with improved spam filtering.

Microsoft Office 2007 includes a refreshed Microsoft Outlook.

I haven't read any details, but one can only assume Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 includes some spam-related upgrades.

Windows Vista includes Windows Live Mail (previously known as Outlook Express). Windows Live Mail is the most radical upgrade.

Outlook Express doesn't really have any built-in antispam measures, while Windows Live Mail clearly has some. The interface and feature set looks nice (I might even borrow some of their ideas...), but I haven't tested how well it works.

Some day, these products will gain reasonable market share and most users will benefit from the improvements.

Some might say this doesn't bode well for SpamButcher. I'm not that worried.

The bipedal cockroach known as the spammer is a highly resilient creature.

When first-generation spam blocking technology came into play, they found new and creative ways to spell v1@gra.

When DNS blacklists caused email servers to reject messages from their servers, they employed botnets to distribute their spam sending.

When the United States passed the CAN-SPAM act, they ignored it.

Now, they're engaging in image spamming. What's next?

The whole time SpamButcher has quietly been blocking 95% to 99% of the junk.

How can we do this? Well, SpamButcher is small. The development team can respond to emerging patterns in spam fast. Also, the development team's finances are directly tied to the success of the product. No one's going to get rich from antispam software that only stops only 60% of spam.

So, let's assume that almost everyone has MS's latest and greatest filtering systems deployed in the next 4 years. I have great faith that spammers, also being motivated by economics (if not ethics) will find a way around them.

On the other hand, SpamButcher is a small enough operation to sneak "under the radar." Even if we capture 5% of the total market, spammers probably won't notice their email is getting blocked, and won't spend a lot of time specifically trying to sneak past our filters.

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