Don"t bother deploying free spam filtering software you find on the Internet -- it is what spam writers use to carry out quality control on their efforts, said one computer security specialist.
"When their spam manages to get through these filters, that"s when they decide to start sending it out," warned Charles Cousins, managing director of Sophos Southeast Asia Pte Ltd, a leading developer of antivirus software that is now getting into the antispam business.
It was thus a waste of time and money to deploy such spam filters, he said. Users might see an initial dip in spam, but eventually the dip would flatten out and more would begin coming in again.
Spam -- unsolicited and usually undesirable e-mail hawking everything from organ enlargement pills to porn -- was evolving, Cousins said.