[TriLUG] Help: Spam Filtering

[William Ward]

Guys and Gals:

I spoke to my boss about using SpamAssassin as a potential tool for 
reducing the spam count, but he says we're going to buy Brightmail 
services this week.  I have a small window of opportunity (basically 
tomorrow) to write up a proposal with concrete comparisons between 
Brightmail and SpamAssassin.  He doesn't understand the implications of 
going with Open Source/Free Software and the "its free" pricetag isn't 
working.

I need your help.  I would appreciate personal examples of corporations 
using SpamAssassin successfully, how they support it, and I also need 
some sources of detailed information on how SpamAssassin updates its 
filters, and where it gets that info from.  I'm working on the homepage 
right now, but its a lot of info to soak in.

If I can get this to work, it will be a great way to avoid yet another 
commercial exploitation of a problem that really shouldn't exist in the 
first place.

Any and all help and advice appreciated.  Please contact me at this 
address or at home 919-934-1285.

Virus scanning will come later, we have a solution that seems to work 
okay for that.  This is strictly spam.  I need a 'black box' 
implementation to plug in front of Exchange and filter, then relay the 
kosher mail to the Exchange server.

Thanks again,
Bill