Smoothwall Spam Filter

[Stuart_C]

Hi there,

Is the Smoothwall Spam filter any good? I think I'm going to be in the market for some additional spam filtering. The simplest option would be to add the SmoothZap module so I was wondering if anyone is using it and what they thought?

[tom_newton]

Yes it's bloody brilliant*

 

Anti-Spam is one of the few things we don't do ourselves (we'd not be very good at it, we prefer playing with web filters) - the actual anti-spam engine is licenced tech from a company called MailShell - they are actually one of the better examples of the breed, and supply some "big name" products.

 

*this statement may contain traces of bias

[Sylv3r]

We use it and it captures a lot of spam, but is also a little on the sensitive side.

 

It's not particuarly pricey so is worth it in my opinion.

 

Some observations though:

 

You can only release spam from within the school (access via the internal IP) - makes it a pain for staff at weekends / during holidays.

 

We get a daily spam summary per user but even if you have no spam captured you still get an e-mail to say you have no spam - so its basically spamming you to say this!

 

I could be wrong and Tom may have a solution to the above - it may just be the way we have set it up.

[tom_newton]

You're generally about right - though:

* you can tune the sensitivity

* there is a way to stop the balnk emails - but its a minor code hack under the hood - drop me a line monday and i'll have one of the guys install it for you

 

Interesting use case there of unquarantining email from external. Hmm Hmm Hmm. I suppose you could port forward to the smoothie and make the email point to a DNS name... but i'll have a think about other solutions.

[Sylv3r]

You're generally about right - though:

* you can tune the sensitivity

* there is a way to stop the balnk emails - but its a minor code hack under the hood - drop me a line monday and i'll have one of the guys install it for you

 

Interesting use case there of unquarantining email from external. Hmm Hmm Hmm. I suppose you could port forward to the smoothie and make the email point to a DNS name... but i'll have a think about other solutions.

 

Thanks Tom - I'll drop you an e-mail.

[andy_coster]

You're generally about right - though:

* you can tune the sensitivity

* there is a way to stop the balnk emails - but its a minor code hack under the hood - drop me a line monday and i'll have one of the guys install it for you

 

Interesting use case there of unquarantining email from external. Hmm Hmm Hmm. I suppose you could port forward to the smoothie and make the email point to a DNS name... but i'll have a think about other solutions.

 

Hi- I too have the issue of not being able to release spam emails from outside the organization on our UTM-3000. Is there a solution to this? Sorry to bring up an old post!

[lmgtfy]

When I got a quote it seemed pretty expensive, sorry Smoothwall love the filtering BTW but I think the Spam stuff was more expensive than the filtering for us.

 

I looked at changing to Dyn Email Gateway - Dyn only $50 a year roughly see this thread http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/113150-spam-filter-software.html for more ideas