The most popular e-mail clients come with spam filters and most likely, they will become standard equipment for all e-mail clients. In the meantime, third party products can do the job. Most are easy to set up but some require minor technical skills to set up the mail server address or change a port number. There are dozens of filter programs (some even marketed through spam) but here are a few good ones.
>Spam Sleuth – Blue Squirrel
Spam Sleuth is a good spam filter and encompasses many of the features needed to process the complexities of e-mail. At the core of this program is a point system. It assigns negative points to good words and positive points to bad. The thresholds for determining what is spam and what is not spam are arbitrary and can be adjusted. Good words are added by the user and the program comes with a starter list of bad words such as free, adult and casino.
Spam Sleuth is a good spam filter and encompasses many of the features needed to process the complexities of e-mail. At the core of this program is a point system. It assigns negative points to good words and positive points to bad. The thresholds for determining what is spam and what is not spam are arbitrary and can be adjusted. Good words are added by the user and the program comes with a starter list of bad words such as free, adult and casino.There is a list of Friends and a list of Spammers. You add to both as you train Spam Sleuth. This list bypasses the point system – all friends are allowed through and all spammers are blocked.
Spam Sleuth is relatively straightforward to set up. It works by checking your e-mail accounts at a faster rate than your e-mail client. It grabs the spam and leaves good stuff on the server. Setting the e-mail client to get mail every 25 minutes and Spam Sleuth to check every five minutes seems to work well. The advantage of this approach is that it requires absolutely no integration with the existing e-mail client. Version 1.2 added an optional bounce feature that simulates an e-mail delivery failure. This will often result in your address being removed from the spammer’s list. www.bluesquirrel.com
Norton Internet Security 2003 – Symantec Corporation
Norton Internet Security is an all-in-one Internet security package. The new Spam Alert feature is surprisingly good. It works by checking incoming mail before it hits the e-mail client. It uses a set of rules to detect spam and when it finds it, the original subject line is preceded with the words “Spam Alert”. The e-mail client is then set to toss mail with the words Spam Alert on the subject line. It catches the vast majority of spam with a low rate (but not zero) of false positives. Placing the Spam Alert rule at the end of the filter list will give the e-mail client’s filter a chance to catch mislabelled spam. Ironically, one of Symantec’s other products, SystemWorks, is heavily spammed. Symantec claims that it is not responsible for the e-mail campaign. www.symantec.com
Norton Internet Security is an all-in-one Internet security package. The new Spam Alert feature is surprisingly good. It works by checking incoming mail before it hits the e-mail client. It uses a set of rules to detect spam and when it finds it, the original subject line is preceded with the words “Spam Alert”. The e-mail client is then set to toss mail with the words Spam Alert on the subject line. It catches the vast majority of spam with a low rate (but not zero) of false positives. Placing the Spam Alert rule at the end of the filter list will give the e-mail client’s filter a chance to catch mislabelled spam. Ironically, one of Symantec’s other products, SystemWorks, is heavily spammed. Symantec claims that it is not responsible for the e-mail campaign. www.symantec.com
iHateSpam – Sunbelt Software
iHateSpam is a well-regarded spam filtering package the integrates with Outlook and Outlook Express clients. Using a whitelist of friends, and rules which are updated automatically, iHateSpam has a very high accuracy. Like Spam Sleuth, it has a bounce feature that tells the spammer that your e-mail address is invalid, hopefully taking you off the list. iHateSpam’s only real downside is that it can only be used with recent Outlook products: Outlook Express 5 or 6 or Outlook 2000/2002. Windows 95 with Outlook 98 is not supported. Internet Explorer 5.0/6.0 is required. www.sunbelt-software.com
iHateSpam is a well-regarded spam filtering package the integrates with Outlook and Outlook Express clients. Using a whitelist of friends, and rules which are updated automatically, iHateSpam has a very high accuracy. Like Spam Sleuth, it has a bounce feature that tells the spammer that your e-mail address is invalid, hopefully taking you off the list. iHateSpam’s only real downside is that it can only be used with recent Outlook products: Outlook Express 5 or 6 or Outlook 2000/2002. Windows 95 with Outlook 98 is not supported. Internet Explorer 5.0/6.0 is required. www.sunbelt-software.com
SpamCatcher – Mailshell
Mailshell claims that its product will catch 99% of spam. While this is optimistic, it does do a good job. SpamCatcher makes use of a network of over 800,000 users to identify spam and quickly update its blacklist and filter rules. Like iHateSpam, it integrates with only with the recent Microsoft Outlook products: Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002/XP (English). www.mailshell.com/spamcatcher
Mailshell claims that its product will catch 99% of spam. While this is optimistic, it does do a good job. SpamCatcher makes use of a network of over 800,000 users to identify spam and quickly update its blacklist and filter rules. Like iHateSpam, it integrates with only with the recent Microsoft Outlook products: Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002/XP (English). www.mailshell.com/spamcatcher
POPFile
Despite POPFile’s lacklustre name, it’s one the best free spam filters out there. It also uses Bayesian analysis to sniff out spam. POPfile sits between the e-mail client and its POP3 account (Windows, Mac, Linux).
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
Six Steps To Reduce Spam
1. Never respond to commercial e-mail unless it is from a legitimate company. Responsible companies will delete your address when asked but an opt-out message sent to a spammer frequently does nothing but confirm that your address is valid. This confirmed address is then sold to other bulk e-mailers which invites more spam.
2. Don’t post your address on your personal Web site. Spammers use software “harvesters” that comb the Internet looking for the string “something@something”.
3. Use a secondary e-mail address in newsgroups. Newsgroups are a prime target for harvesters. Use a disposable account or a throwaway account from a free e-mail provider (called a honey pot) that you can delete or ignore as it fills up with junk. Some newsgroup posters add a term such as “nospam” to their address and include instructions to remove that term before sending an e-mail.
4. Don’t give out your e-mail address without knowing how it will be used. Read the terms of use and privacy statements before telling them your address. You may be giving the company approval to send commercial e-mail.
5. Never buy anything advertised in spam. If no one buys the advertised products, companies will quit paying spammers to advertise them. If you really want the product, look for it with a search engine. Alternatively, move the mouse pointer over the link. If there are letters or numbers appended to the Web site address, edit the link so that it stops after “.com” and browse to the product that you want. This will remove the spammer’s identification, preventing financial compensation and reducing the apparent effectiveness of the spam campaign.
6. Use a spam filter or a filtered e-mail service.
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