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Dealing with Spam E-mail at Selborne Chambers

On Monday morning Selborne Chambers would find that clerks mailbox contained hundreds of messages. Almost every message was spam but each had to be manually checked by a clerk just in case an important message had been sent by a client or a barrister.

It wasn't only the clerks who were suffering, barristers were also receiving high volumes of spam mail. For some, this represented over 75% of the messages they received. Across Chambers this nuisance represents a significant amount of wasted time and so money.

Our solution was to implement an internal Spam Gateway - a device that sits between their mail server and the Internet. Each message passing through the gateway has a variety of checks and tests performed on it and if it is deemed to be Spam it is not delivered but put to one side instead. The service also learns about the kind of mail that Chambers sends and to whom. This is then used to improve the accuracy of its spam detection.

The gateway uses an open source application, Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP), to perform the spam filter thus avoiding systems that involve expensive per user/per mailbox licensing costs or complex management. By keeping the service "in-house" Chambers retains complete control over its messaging allowing messages to be easily tracked and any issues of messages being blocked can be quickly resolved.

Now on a Monday morning the Clerks Inbox is often empty, not because the service isn't working but because it is exceptionally accurate in keeping out spam!

Darren Madle, a clerk at Selborne, said of the system:

"It has made our Clerks Inbox usable again and the members of Chambers are delighted with the efficiency of the system. This service provided by CTS has far exceeded our expectations."

If your Chambers is suffering from the effects of Spam, please contact us.

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