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Ask HN: Is there a spam filtering web service?

by sam_in_nyc on 10/28/09, 1:26 AM with 6 comments

After reading Resig's post about Google Groups, I was wondering if there exists a web service that specializes in filtering out spam.

I would imagine I could create a new filter, send training data to a filter, and send data to a filter and have it return the likelihood of it being spam.

Anybody have first hand experience using a web service like this? If so, has it met your expectations?

  • by kngspook on 10/28/09, 9:07 AM

    Well, Google's own Postini does spam-filtering.

    I could imagine a setup where you have people send mail to an alias on your domain, route it into Postini, and then into Google Groups. The big problem would be getting users _not_ to send directly to Google Groups. And I'm not sure you'd even be able to tell them (direct vs. filtered) apart in Google Groups...

  • by kngspook on 10/28/09, 9:08 AM

    Can someone outline for me the pros/cons of a mailing list vs. a forum?

    Except for the registering-over-and-over-again issue, it seems like forums would be preferable generally... (Especially given that most will send you emails with new posts if you ask it to.)

  • by RossP on 10/28/09, 3:27 AM

    Akismet does just this for blog posts.

  • by _pius on 10/28/09, 1:34 AM

    Defensio?