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Anti-spam vendors such as McAfee, Symantec and Microsoft, are failing to satisfy their customers in fighting annoying spam. "Email is consistently recognized as the most important communications service affecting job performance in virtually all industries and all job roles. Yet spam continues to detract from user productivity by providing too many inappropriate, anonymous, bulk and irrelevant messages. The Spam Index is the first objective real world tool that takes into account real-world user experiences in comparing the effectiveness of anti-spam technologies. The Spam Index uniquely provides the link to real-world user experience, something missing in earlier technology evaluations.", according to Peter Brockmann, president of the company that coducted the survey (Brockmann & Company).

When evaluating technologies with the Spam Index, lower scores represent the best performing technologies. The report finds that the best performing anti-spam technology is challenge-response. This is 50% less than the next lowest average score achieved by hosted services, indicating that challenge response is twice as effective as hosted services for prevention of spam. The worst performing technology was filter-based ISP solutions.

The study also found that challenge response is the most consistent technology. Challenge response 55% more consistent than the next most consistent technology, hosted services. The least consistent technology was filter-based PC email client technology. This means that respondents who use challenge-response technology consistently have the same experience while users of other technologies have high variability in their experiences.

The study also found that challenge-response users are more satisfied with their overall email experience than any other anti-spam technology users. Some 67% of challenge response users specified that they are very satisfied with their email experience as compared to next highest technology class, hosted services, where 42% reporting that they are very satisfied. The report found that the least satisfied users were those without any anti-spam solution.

The study evaluated eight anti-spam technologies:

• Challenge-Response-: this technology allows email from known senders to pass directly to protected users. In some cases, outbound email is monitored to add those addressees to the known sender list. First time senders, which include virtually all spam, are challenged with a reply email requesting that the sender reply to the message in order to assure the original email is delivered. Vendors: Sendio, SpamArrest
• Filter - Hosted service-(Spam Index: 316): Hosted email filtering services use the readily available processing power of Internet data centers. Vendors: AppRiver, MessageLabs, MXLogic, Google/Postini
• Filter - Appliance: This class integrates software with a hardware appliance, tuning the package for optimal processing performance. Vendors: Barracuda, Borderware, McAfee, Secure Computing
• Filter - Commercial software: This class tends to be virus filtering software with extended anti-spam functionality. Vendors: McAfee, Symantec, TrendMicro
• Real-time Black Lists: These reputation-based systems collect feedback from users to manage a 'black list' of known spammer IP addresses and domains. Vendors: Commtouch, IronPort, Spamhaus
• Filter - PC Email Client: This spam filter is a feature of most email clients. Users can train their client spam filters to move or delete mail meeting certain conditions. Vendors: Apple, IBM Lotus, Microsoft
• Filter - Open Source software: This technology is frequently configured to work in conjunction with PC email client filters. The server adds ****SPAM**** to the subject line so that the client filter can move the message into the junk folder. Vendors/Projects: ASSP, Mail Washer, SpamAssassin
• Filter - ISP-based: Offered by most email hosting service providers, this anti-spam technology provides some form of anti-virus and anti-spam filtering for hosted domains. The study showed that this was the least effective solution.