POP3 Email Filtering & Web Monitoring Solutions

[strick1029]

We are looking for an affordable e-mail spam filter and/or web monitoring solution for our small to medium sized business. Our email is POP3 and is handled through our web host.
We're getting tons of spam and we also need the capability to monitor and block websites being accessed by employees.
I've seen some hardware solutions (Barracuda Spam Firewall and Barracuda Web Filter), but will they work in our situation?
We'd appreciate any input from anyone who's had a similar problem.
Thank you for your assistance.

[Welshjim]

strick1029--Many webhosts offer spam filters as part of the service.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-38,GGLG:en&q=spam+filter+for+web+host
Have you asked your webhost provider? It may not be turned on by default. (This is true of many ISP's as well.)
Firewalls will not stop spam.
Concerning monitoring, what is it you want to monitor?
Many ideas on blocking access to websites here
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-38,GGLG:en&q=block+access+to+websites
There also is the HOSTS file that you can use to block access to specific sites of your choosing, but your employees may be smart enough to figure the way around that, unless you lock access to the HOSTS file, itself.
http://www.accs-net.com/hosts/

[strick1029]

Thanks Jim, for your suggestions.

I have spoken to our webhost and they do not offer spam filtering as part of their service, and don't plan on offering it in the near future.
As for monitoring, the "higher-ups" want to keep an eye on bandwidth usage from audio and video streaming, as well as keeping an eye on the amount of non-business web surfing that's taking place during business hours.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply. Your input is greatly appreciated.

[emty]

The only way to stem spam that I know of, or at least minimize, other than "software solutions" is to embed your email address into flash. SPAM Bots cannot find an email address (so far anyway) when embeded. Software Filters do work until spammers find a workaround, and I'm sorry to say they are working 'round the clock to foil the best. It seems that every other day someone comes up with a "new" solution for curbing spam. I don't buy it! Spam IS an occurence that we have to deal with, yet with a bit of knowledge, it can be minimized. Don't waste your money on the "latest and greatest" spam filtering stuff offered. It will only work in the short-run.

[jdc2000]

For most businesses today a spam filter is probably a requirement. There are various methods for spammers to ontain e-mail addresses, and the primary one - stealing address book info from infected computers of e-mail recipients - is not controllable by your company.

Since you don't have your own e-mail server, there are at least three possible solutions.

1. Install spam filtering software on each client PC. If you are using Outlook 2003, you already have a decent spam filtering capability available. Otherwise, you will need some other spam filter software on each PC. Some antivirus suites and security suites provide this, or you can go with a standaloe solution.

2. There are outsourcing solutions for this service that can work with your ISP to filter out spam.

3. Hardware solutions that can also block or monitor web traffic are available.


Links:

http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/?a=google-spamfilter&wcw=google&gclid=CMnuzvjbzIsCFRBGGAodVGzFHA&L=en
http://spam-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://spam-software.6starreviews.com/?Refer=GoSR&Keyword=anti%20spam%20software%20reviews
http://www.katharion.com/solutions/

[emty]

jdc2000 illustrates my point exactly. Google "spam filters" and you will be deluged by a plethora of worthless (in the long run) software that will soon be outdated unless you pay for update after update after update! But wait! Here's another product that is even better!??? As stated in my other post, embed your email into a flash application, or just don't publish your email on the WorldWideWeb. Disregard this post if you are a kazillionaire, and can afford to waste your time and money.

[jdc2000]

emty -

I think you are misunderstanding the original question. Once you already have a boatload of spam coming in to e-mail addresses, you really only have two choices:

1. Change everyone's e-mail address. This is a major pain, and only for works for a few months at best until the spammers have them again. Even if you prevent spambots from harvesting the addresses from your web site, they will soon be compromised by infected recipient PC's. There isn't anything you can do about that.

2. Use some sort of spam filtering. If you are using Outlook 2003, that may be enough once junk mail filtering is enabled. Otherwise some sort of solution is needed. They do cost money, but the good ones will easily return enough productivity to be worth it. If you have your own Exchange server, Exclaimer works well. It does not use the usual methods of examining the message content. Instead it checks the message headers to filter out most spam.

When your users are receiving 100-300 spam messages per day or more, a spam filter is a requirement.