I just wanted to put a post about my trials of spam blocking.

For the last several months I had used a service called MessageFire, which costs around $5 a month. This service adds a header tag to my email containing JUNK for spam, and MAIL for non-spam. The header tag is also followed by a link which will allow me to re-categorize the email if it was tagged incorrectly. For a very long time, the service worked relatively well, however over the past few months I've noticed a growing number of messages sneaking though... Interestingly enough, the service was taken over by a new company a couple months ago, called MessageGate. I *think* they dropped individual accounts when they did this, though they allowed those that do subscribe to continue their accounts.

With the number of spam messages that sneak through getting larger, I decided it was time to find a new service. I ran across SpamCop, for around $20-$30ish a month. It uses 2 services, both SpamCop's black list of sending domains, and SpamAssassin, a highly praised baysen [sp?] filter.

When I started using SpamCop, I set my MessageFire account to disabled. After a day, I was finding somewhere near 40-50 messages a day getting though!!! I couldn't believe it. My only option would have been to turn down the reliability of SpamAssassin. I did NOT want to do this, however, due to the fact that when I emailed myself, each email had a rating of 5, the minimum I had SpamAssassin set to...

So I tried something drastic. I re-enabled MessageFire, and began using both MessageFire and SpamCop (with SpamAssassin) at the same time. Since, I've been quite amazed by the accuracy. I'm averaging 1-5 spam messages getting though, though my level of non-spam being marked has gone up from 0 to 0-1 a day... I really don't like using 2 services (of which I both have to pay for), however, as of now it's my most reliable option...

If anybody out there has any suggestions outside of MessageFire, SpamCop, and SpamAssassin (without the use of an external program or plug in), PLEASE let me know about it!!!