Spam Cube: A spam filtering appliance for the home. It’s $150, and sits between your modem and your router. Presumably it intercepts POP and IMAP requests and cleans them before returning the results.
Is there a point to this? Why a hardware solution? Just to protect more than one computer?
They claim it protects up to four computers, though customers have claimed to protect up to six. That seems low to me. Spam filtering isn’t that resource-intensive, is it? Keep in mind that this is a dedicated appliance, so it has a processor in it that doesn’t nothing but filter spam.
You're right, it does seem low. I wonder how they can restrict the number of clients, though, if it's a home network and this a device positioned ahead in the stream (in front of the router).
Here's a recipe for a homemade spam filtering device (which could be a cube if you have an old Shuttle lying around):
1) Prep that old computer in the closet that you've waited for a use for with some *nix.
2) Install SpamAssassin/ClamAV and your MTA of choice.
3) Shake thoroughly.
Serves: depends on the computer's configuration
I don't think it's artificially limited. They mention on their site that some clients are using it for six "low email volume" computers. I think it's just underpowered.
gotta say this looks really cool, i might order one. I seen this on TV the other night , the chick who was using the cube was hawt! :) i'd like to get dirty nerdy with her thats 4 sure.
Did anyone here try one of these yet?
I bought one of these last week after i seen this article on google. I got to say i am pretty impressed, it's fast i thought it would slow down my network at first. Besides from getting stuck with a pink cube since the others were sold out i give it two thumbs up from a true geek.
keep it dirty nerdy baby in dax 0d6
i seen this on tv the other night it blocks way more than spam, also does virus spyware and phishing, so installing an opensource anti-spam filter on a linux server as a middleman in your home is pretty much a quarter of the solution.
While there is certainly a need for a solution to our current spam problem, I doubt this is any huge breakthrough in span filtering algorithms.
There are a few good ideas here:
This box DOES NOT block all viruses and spyware... only those that are contained in emails. If you are opening email attachments from people you don't know, then you certainly should get one of these. Better yet, you should get two and hook them up in series just to be sure.
This box doesn't stop you from downloading a virus or spyware from the web, nor does it firewall your home network from non-email based attacks. So you still need a firewall, virus scanner and spyware scanner...
Also the "Remote hybrid expert system" will only work well if a lot of users buy the system and use it.... I bet the "hybrid" part of the expert system involves some guy manually identifying spam and/or writing simple algorithms to recognize new spam tricks...
