Best Anti Spam Software

[DarrenH]

Hi folks

Ok, I've just uninstalled McAfee's spam Killer as it seemed pretty rubbish to be honest, still getting tns of it and it wasn't even sending it to my spam file.

What's the best anti spam system. the actual deleting of the e-amils isn't a worry to me, but there's a ton of sexually explicit stuf coming through and this is a shared computer and I'm not happy with the kids coming across it, even by accident.


And I don't need refinancing! lol

I'm using both outlook and outlook express.

Cheers
Darren

[coxadmin]

I use Mailwasher Pro - the email is downloaded into Mailwasher as text only and you can review it before deciding whether it's spam or not. If it's spam you have the facility the report it, as well as delete it before it reaches your inbox.

My dad told me about this a couple of years ago and I recommend it highly.

They have a 30 day free trial - see http://www.firetrust.com/firetrustpro.html for more information. There is a completely free version but you don't the Blacklist functions with it, so I think it's not worth it.

[DarrenH]

Hi

Isn't the idea though to not have to decide if it's spam? Shouldn'tt an anti spam system decide for you unless you give it ruels to follow, like let anyone who's in my addressbook cont me?

if i've got to still read the stuff, where's the advantage.

Darren

[Ian J]

I have used Mailwasher for years and it's excellent. NTL seem to have got their act together recently with improved anti sopam filtering but not too long ago I was receiving 100 spam emails every day.

When you fire up Mailwasher it will examine all of the emails on the mailserver and will sort them into groups including "friends" "Blacklisted" and those it doesn't know about. The blacklisted ones are bounced back to sender leaving just the ones that you want to be downloaded.

The emails that it's unsure about it will leave you the option of downloading or blacklisting

[coxadmin]

Sorry, I clearly didn't describe how to use Mailwasher very well - Ian J's description is a very good one. Mailwasher groups the emails depending on whether it "thinks" it is spam or legitimate. I look at the email address and the snippet of the email shown in the preview window to assess whether to download or not. It takes a matter of seconds to do and I get an average of 40 spam emails a day on one of my accounts.

The only problem with allowing your ISP to decide if something is spam is if it deletes a legitimate email you cannot retrieve it. With Mailwasher Pro I have retrieved incorrectly deleted emails.

[DarrenH]

Hi

Thank you both, I ust didn't understand.

I've downloaded the free version and will see how I get on with it, if it proves useful, I'll register and pay.

Thanks again

Darren

[kyber]

Best is a tricky one. No anti-spam solution is 100% effective. False positives are a risk.

I use a two step process:

1. All of our email accounts come via spamcop which filters out pretty much all established viruses and general spam. For the rest, I rely on the email client:
2a. At home I use the TheBat email client with a bayesian spam filter (http://email.about.com/cs/bayesianfilters/a/bayesian_filter.htm).
2b. Away from home I use the Thunderbird email client which has reasonable junk filters once you have eductated it well enough.

Stuart