Like the Grand National

Spam filters are a funny breed of technology - given at how many levels they operate - ISP, email programme, desktop etc, they have become like fences in the Grand National - very hard to negotiate.

They also lack coverage or commentary - so it is difficult to know if you have fallen, and if so, when or where.

Each filter is different and, it seems, increasing zealous - presumably in a bid to become the market leader.

AntiSpam - stops 99.9% of all spam (and lots of legitimate emails as well)

A client, fed up with her subscriber only emails getting filtered on an ad hoc basis, recently tried an experiment - she included every spammer phrase she could find, and the results were astounding - the highest open rate ever!

Made me, and the advice I had been giving her, look pretty silly.

The point is that it is a lottery nowadays - and suggestions for industry standards will only make it easier for spammers - they will have a much more precise definition of what they have to combat.

The problem with 3rd party filters is that they are deciding for you - at Inbox we have a no filters policy, and if that means we spend 10 minutes a day clicking delete in reply to those kind people who want to award us $30 million or enhance or gooleys, then so be it.

At least we get all of our email.