Anti-Spam Tools

GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP is a server based anti spam and email management solution for Microsoft Exchange Server and Notes/SMTP servers. Spam is caught before it gets to the mail server, no need to deploy client software. Its advanced Spam detection technology is based on: Content checking of body and subject for spam keywords, checking mail headers for typical spam practices, and checking if the sending mail server is on a third part black list such as ORDB. Admins can also set-up their own blacklists, as well as reduce false positives using the automatic whitelist feature. The program also features disclaimers, mail monitoring of particular email addresses, centralized mail archiving to database, mail reporting (e.g., top mail users), POP3 downloading and auto replies with variables/fields. The anti spam DNS blacklists checking (ORDBC etc.), custom blacklist and automatic whitelist modules are freeware and will not time out after evaluation has ended.

SpamExperts Desktop is spam filter that works with any email program and automatically intercepts spam - no configuration or changes to your existing email setup are required! Even though the program does require an initial training phase (you simply need to tell it which messages are good and which are spam), it does not rely on keyword lists to detect spam, but automatically learns from the content of the messages that you accept or reject within a few days. The email that is identified as spam is either tagged in the subject line and can then be sorted into a spam folder (using your email rules), or you can choose to block it completely, in which case it is not downloaded to your email program but can still be reviewed and recovered (if needed) from the SpamExperts cache. SpamExperts Desktop can also check your email periodically, filtering spam in the background, and maintain a list of blocked and allowed senders.

SpamButcher is an easy to use anti-spam filter that checks for new messages in your inbox every X minutes and if it finds any spam, the messages are moved to a holding area for your later examination or deletion. SpamButcher utilizes a fuzzy logic system that offers 3 levels of aggressiveness. During our tests, it detected a high percentage of spam with almost no false positives. SpamButcher works directly on your POP3 mailbox and runs independently of any email program. You can also add senders to a WhiteList or BlackList in order to keep their mail from being accidentally filtered. The filtered email is saved and can be purged after review or optionally automatically every X days. In addition, SpamButcher can optionally send you scheduled reports of all intercepted spam via e-mail and clicking on an email in the report can automatically restore it to your inbox. The program requires a POP3 account and therefore does not work with AOL or Hotmail accounts. Additional features include blocking of virus attachments and custom filter options.

Disruptor OL is a anti-spam COM add-in for Outlook. It offers an automatic spam filter that will catch most common spam, as well as additional settings for advanced users, that allow you to tweak and customize the filtering process to your needs. It seamlessly integrates into Outlook and can be accessed from the toolbar. Disruptor OL includes DSNBL checking, language filters, keyword filters and (experimental) Bayesian filtering. In addition, it provides the ability to add senders to a whitelist or blacklist, blocking based on domains and more. The program also includes several features to enhance email security by converting messages to text, managing attachments, removing Java script, external images and more.

ChoiceMail is your digital doorman for all your email. It monitors all your incoming messages and any senders unknown to you are held up and the sender is asked to fill in a short form explaining why he or she wants to contact you. If senders do not register after a set period, their messages are quietly deleted. You are notified of new mail, as soon as the sender confirmed the message, and have the option to add him/her to your approval mail permanently, so that the validation process has not be repeated the next time. ChoiceMail runs as a local POP server, and no mail is ever lost. If you want, you can browse the pending or rejected email messages at any time, they are safely stored on your local computer until they are either deleted by you or confirmed. The program acts as a "waiting area" between your email program and the internet. It downloads all your email, just like you would normally do, but only the ones that were approved by you are passed on to your email program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape etc). ChoiceMail can be customized in many aspects, you can pre-approve all your current contacts (imported from your address book) and setup rules to automatically approve messages based on domain, subject, keywords and more. You can also setup filters to automatically delete obvious spam and pre-approve anyone that you are sending an email to, eliminating the need for them get confirmed. Additional features include spam statistics, customized response messages, multiple accounts and more. ChoiceMail works with your existing email address and accounts.

AntispamSniper for Outlook Express is a spam filter that integrates with Outlook Express and automatically filters your incoming mail. It moves spam into a Junk Mail folder, from where you can review it and delete it later. The program combines several spam filtering techniques including attachment filtering, DNSBL filtering, customizable spam rules, blocking of specific senders and more. If a message slips through the filter or is incorrectly classified, you can easily train the filtering engine by simply clicking a button on the toolbar. The program will detect and filter a high percentage of common spam without the need for further configuration, and the accuracy will improve as it learns from your messages.

SpamBully for Outlook Express is an anti-spam tool for Outlook Express (or any other POP3 email program), that learns from spam messages and continually adjusts itself to protect your mailbox. It uses proactive rather than reactive methods for eliminating spam, and will actually keep 99% of spam out of your inbox in most cases. We tested it on our spam mailbox and it filtered 199 out of 200 spam messages that were downloaded. This is very impressive, considering that it does not require any kind of user configurations. If needed however, you can customize the filtering by maintaining an automatically generated Friends list and also add any senders to a block list with a single click. The program can also bounce messages from known spammers, query emails sent from unfamiliar emailers (require confirmation), block selected attachments types and more. In addition, it produces a nice graph view that you can use to view your daily, weekly or yearly spam statistics. Even though optimized for Outlook Express, Spam Bully can work with any POP3 compatible email program. It runs a local POP server, that acts as a front-end to your email program.

Spam Bully is an anti-spam tool for MS Outlook, that learns from spam messages and continually adjusts itself to protect your mailbox. It uses proactive rather than reactive methods for eliminating spam, and will actually keep 99% of spam out of your inbox in most cases. We tested it on our spam mailbox and it filtered 199 out of 200 spam messages that were downloaded. This is very impressive, considering that it does not require any kind of user configurations. If needed however, you can customize the filtering by maintaining an automatically generated Friends list and also add any senders to a block list with a single click. Spam Bully tightly integrates with Outlook and moves all spam messages into a new folder (Spam) from where they can be permanently deleted. This enables you to keep an eye on what is being filtered and to make sure that no good messages got caught by the filter. The program can also bounce messages from known spammers, query emails sent from unknown senders (require confirmation), block selected attachments types and more. In addition, it produces a nice graph view that you can use to view your daily, weekly or yearly spam statistics. An excellent choice for Outlook users, and from what we have tested so far, it is definitely the most sophisticated one. A must-try for any Outlook user!

No Spam Today! for Workstations is a POP3 spam filter for Outlook, Outlook Express and all other POP3 email clients, that uses the SpamAssassin engine to perform Bayesian filtering of incoming messages, and also quarantines message attachments for added security. The program runs as a local POP3 server and marks the subject line of incoming spam, so you can use your email program`s rules feature to further process the messages based on your preference (move them, delete them etc.). You can customize the text that is added to the subject line, and also choose to delete spam messages immediately. The (open-source) spam engine used, has been proven to work very effectively, however to get most out of the program, you will need some basic understanding of POP accounts and email rules.

Cloudmark Desktop for Outlook is a fully automatic anti-spam and anti-phishing add-on for Outlook, that filters your email as it arrives in your Inbox and moves suspected spam into a designated spam folder, from where you can review it later or delete it. The filtering mechanism is based on the Cloudmark service, the largest community-based platform used to stop the plague of junk email and email fraud, and it does not require you to create any filters or rules. You can however create a white list, to make sure certain contacts will never be filtered, and also re-classify selected messages.

Spamcc is an anti-spam tool that combines Bayesian filtering with a Blacklists, a Friends list and a set of custom keyword filters to automatically mark or delete incoming messages before they are even downloaded to your computer. The program works with POP3, IMAP, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo and MSN accounts. You can preview messages, delete them, mark them as spam or write a quick reply. The Bayesian filter will automatically learn from new messages that you mark as spam and will adjust the automatic filtering to improve accuracy. Additional features include blocking by country, message grouping, attachment filtering, preview and saving of messages, geographical tracing and more.

Spam Reader is an anti-spam add-on for Microsoft Outlook, that automatically scans your incoming messages and filters spam into a designated Spam folder, from where you can review and delete it. The filtering results were very good, and the program caught most common spam without any further adjustment. Spam Reader uses a Bayesian engine, so the filtering will automatically adapt and learn from messages that you designate as spam or good mail. To make sure that important mail is not accidentally filtered, you can also specify a list of senders that are excluded from filtering, exclude mail that matches Outlook rules, and define keywords and phrases that will always cause the message to be recognized as good mail. Spam Reader is easy-to-use, does not require any maintenance and provides excellent filtering right after installation.

SpamWeed is a junk mail filter for Outlook, Outlook Express or any other POP3 email client (Eudora, PocoMail etc.) It runs as a POP3 proxy on the local computer and filters emails before they are delivered to your email program. SpamWeed uses statistical technology and an auto-generated white list to manage your regular email and spam. The program can automatically configure Outlook Express, and other email programs can be manually configured to connect through SpamWeed.

Zaep AntiSpam is a challenge based anti-spam system that can eliminate 100% of the spam you receive. Unlike spam filters, it does not use any kind of filter or content scanning, but uses a challenge response, a customizable message that is sent to each sender (that is not yet on your approved list) and verifies the identity. The message contains an URL that the user can click on to be added to your list of approved senders. There is no need to resend the message, the purpose is just to confirm the identity of the sender. In addition, the program also performs some additional checking and makes sure that the email addresses actually exist before even sending a response, and auto-blocking the ones that are invalid. Zaep supports multiple accounts and offers individual response messages, white/blacklists for each, as well statistics and more.

Cloudmark Desktop for Thunderbird is a fully automatic anti-spam and anti-phishing add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird that filters your email as it arrives in your Inbox, and moves suspected spam into a designated spam folder, from where you can review it later or delete it. The filtering mechanism is based on the Cloudmark service, the largest community-based platform used to stop the plague of junk email and email fraud, and it does not require you to create any filters or rules on your own. You can however create a white list, to make sure certain contacts will never be filtered, and also re-classify selected messages.

Cloudmark Desktop for Outlook Express is a fully automatic anti-spam and anti-phishing add-on for Outlook, that filters your email as it arrives in your Inbox and moves suspected spam into a designated spam folder, from where you can review it later or delete it. The filtering mechanism is based on the Cloudmark service, the largest community-based platform used to stop the plague of junk email and email fraud, and it does not require you to create any filters or rules. You can however create a white list, to make sure certain contacts will never be filtered, and also re-classify selected messages.

SpamEraser is a spam filter for Microsoft Outlook that automatically filters a high percentage of junk mail from your Inbox. It combines Bayesian filtering methods with a block/allow list and automatically learns from classified mail. The program integrates with the Outlook toolbar and filters spam messages into a Spam and Unsure folder from where they can be reviewed and re-classified if needed.

EMailTrackerPro analyzes the email header and provides the IP Address of the machine that sent the email which can be useful for identifying spammers and locating the source of emails. Many spammers attempt to disguise the sender, EMTPro helps to expose the true origins of the email. A plug-in for MS Outlook adds a button to the Outlook toolbar for one-click email tracking and opens the results in a browser window. For other email programs, the header information may be easily pasted into EMTPro for quick analysis.

SoftInform SpamBlocker is a POP3 spam filter that works independently from your email program. It connects to your POP3 account and deletes all messages that match a set of filters based on sender and keywords contained in the mail. The program comes with a built-in list of spam words, which produces good results for most common spam. You can create additional rules and filters that allow you to add your own spam words, block or allow senders and more. While SpamBlocker provides you with a log of messages that have been deleted, it does not allow you to recover any messages that have been incorrectly classified as spam, which severely limits the usability if you depend on email for business or other important matters.

SpamAid is an easy-to-use Microsoft Outlook add-on that automatically filters the spam from incoming email and moves it into a quarantined folder from where it can be reviewed or deleted. The engine uses Bayesian filtering technology that identifies about 97% of incoming spam messages, and an additional Auto-Learning feature increases the filtration accuracy by analysis of the user`s personal correspondence. The program achieved very good results during our tests, and detected almost all spam messages. Since individual email needs are different, you can further customize the filtering, specify a list of friends and enemies, and also keywords that should bypass the filtering. Additional features include an option to quarantine all non-english character emails, system tray notification and more. SpamAid is a highly effective add-on that allows you to get rid of the spam in your inbox, without taking a chance to accidentally delete an important email, that may have been caught in the filter. Easy and safe to use.

G-Lock SpamCombat is a complex anti-spam solution that combines Bayesian filtering with customizable rules. It scans the email messages while they are still in your POP3 account, and can automatically delete spam on the server, so that it is not even downloaded to your email program. Even though the email is deleted from your POP account, you can still browse through the deleted items and recover any mail if needed (similar to Windows Recycle bin). The Bayesian filter option allows G-Lock SpamCombat to learn from your actions, so all you have to do is mark a message as spam or good and the program automatically adjusts its filter settings to become more accurate. In addition, you can configure custom rules for messages that should always be deleted or accepted, remove viruses and malicious code and more. Additional features include statistical graphs, HTML tag filtering and more.

Spam Monitor detects and tags unsolicited junk mail when you download it into your mailbox. It does not prevent the download of spam, but tags the subject line or headers of the incoming email, so that you can configure your email program to delete or otherwise process the suspected spam messages. The program offers a good set of flexible options that let you choose the level of filtering, as well as the use of external black lists. It further offers white/black list options, blocking by country and customizable network configurations. The program can automatically configure your email program to use Spam Monitor, it works on the TCP/IP level and works with any standard email program.

Spam Filter for ISPs is designed to be a front-end for your incoming SMTP server. It receives all emails addressed to your domain(s) and checks if the sender is listed in one or multiple DNS-based block lists; if not, the email is passed on to your main SMTP server. The administrator can configure which block lists to use, set allowed domains, filter by keyword and maintain a blacklist as well. SpamFilter runs on Windows and Linux systems, both distributions are included in the download.

Vade Retro Antispam is a spam filter for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express that automatically scans incoming emails and sorts potential spam and viruses into dedicated folders from where they can be reviewed and deleted. The program`s filtering capabilities are based on a service that requires frequent updating of the filter definitions, which eliminates the need to create manual filters. We found the filtering results to be rather mediocre with only 70-75% of spam messages caught. Unlike most modern spam tools, Vade Retro Antispam does not have the capability to learn from misclassified messages, so there is no way for the user to improve the filtering results, other than hoping for improved filter updates - which are not provided during the evaluation period.

Innovatools Email Control enables you to categorize and filter your email messages before downloading them to your email program. You can organize the mail by size, attachment, foreign language characters, and several other criteria, and also create your own filters based on common message properties like sender, subject etc. The program can also detect some spam by checking the sender domain against RBL lists and optionally delete it. Unfortunately, none of the filters allow you to set an associated action, so you are forced to review the items that were filtered into each category and then manually choose to delete them - which in our opinions misses the point of creating filters to begin with.

MailFrontier Desktop is a comprehensive anti-spam solution that integrates with Microsoft Outlook and automatically filters incoming spam into a special junkmail folder. The program combines several popular spam filtering techniques as well as anti-phishing features. It uses Bayesian filtering to automatically learn from spam messages, and a combination of blacklists and allowed senders to permanently block or allow certain recipients. In addition, MailFrontier also includes a challenge system that enables you to require a verification from the sender before his or her mail is accepted. Other features include detailed spam statistics, forwarding of messages to wireless devices, customizable content filter settings and more. MailFrontier Desktop delivers very accurate filtering straight out of the box, and can be easily tweaked to adapt to your personal email preferences.

Letterman is an effective anti-spam solution that combines pre-defined rules with customizable filter options that allow immediate filtering of spam out of the box, with the ability to customize the settings to match your personal email patterns. The program works with any POP3, Hotmail and Yahoo account, independent from your email program, so you don`t have to download messages first in order to filter them - spam is delete right on the server and never downloaded to your computer. Letterman offers a wide range of filtering options, including subject, sender, domain, country, foreign languages, and more. The built-in filters detected about 80% of spam during our test, and you can easily fin-tune them with a few clicks. Since Letterman works independently from your email program, you need to manage and delete spam before you download your messages, which adds an extra step to the mail checking process, but has the advantage of not downloading spam and potential viruses to your computer. Overall a very flexible, spam tool, however it requires constant fine tuning and interaction to keep your inbox spam free.

Scam Sensor for Outlook automatically scans all email messages that you open and alerts you immediately if it detects or suspects a phishing scam. The program does not use any online databases, instead it analyzes the message directly, using a complex algorithm, and alerts you if the message is a fraud. During our review, we tested it with several common phishing scams (fake eBay, fake PayPal etc.) and it detected all of them.

Flystrike Spam Interrogator allows you to analyze e-mail messages before downloading them from the POP server. The program then assigns a score based on an inventory of tests to help you identify spam messages. Each message is then marked as good, possible spam or spam and the reasons for it are indicated along the side