> your free off-the-shelf virus and spam filters suck compared to the big companies seeing billions of messages per day
gmail spam filtering is quite bad, in both directions. Legit email goes to spam (even when sent from gmail itself) and spam does get through.
The basic open source tools are actually very, very good at it. I get about 0-2 spams a month, everything else is caught by either my postfix configuration or by spamprobe. And I never get legit email in my spam spool.
This is a much better success rate than what I observe at my gmail account.
Indeed, I'd argue that a selfhosted learning spamfilter will be far more attuned to your personal mail-regime than one that has to do 'well enough' for millions of users.
The latter will catch new spam tricks easier. But the former will be trained by you. For you. For your niche, using your lingo and so on.
To take an extreme example: let's imagine you are the ITperson for a doctors' practice aimed at people with sexual disfunctionality. One thing is for certain: using Google or Outlook for your mail is a disaster waiting to happen.
gmail spam filtering is quite bad, in both directions. Legit email goes to spam (even when sent from gmail itself) and spam does get through.
The basic open source tools are actually very, very good at it. I get about 0-2 spams a month, everything else is caught by either my postfix configuration or by spamprobe. And I never get legit email in my spam spool.
This is a much better success rate than what I observe at my gmail account.