Anti-Spam Tools

POPFile is an email classification system, that automatically sorts your messages and fights spam. It acts as a proxy between your email program and the mail server, scanning all incoming mail and then marks the mail according to your settings. When you first install the program, it is dumb and does not perform any classification at all - it is designed to learn from your personal classifications and becomes more and more hands-off the longer you use it. It keeps a history of all email messages that pass through the system and then allows you to classify each message as good, spam or any other criteria (personal, work, important etc.). These criteria are called "Buckets" and they are similar to virtual mail folders. The mail in each bucket will be tagged in a special way (subject, header), so you can instruct your email program to process it according to your preferences. POPFile does not delete any email on its own, however you can instruct your email program to act upon messages that are tagged as spam (or anything else) and have them be deleted or send to a different mail folder. The program offers an additional Quarantine option that can wrap the message in a container, allowing you to get an idea of the content, without actually opening any attachments or images of the original mail. POPfile uses Naive Bayes classification, which is highly effective an learns from your instructions. Overall, POPfile provides great flexibility and accurate filtering, however it does require at least some basic understanding of email and POP accounts in order to use it effectively.

SpamBayes is an intelligent spam filter and message classifier for Outlook, that automatically categorizes your incoming messages into `good`, `spam` and `unsure` and sorts them into the associated folder. The program uses an advanced, bayesian filtering method that requires no manual setup and gets smarter the more email it processes. It includes a training wizard that can be used to feed it some spam messages, otherwise it will learn from your incoming email as you go. It it misses (or incorrect classified), you can just click the toolbar button and make the message `spam` or `good`, and SpamBayes will automatically learn from it, avoiding to make similar mistakes in the future. The program is easy to use and setup and probably one of the most accurate filtering tools we have come across, with a detection rate of close to 100 percent.

Spamihilator is a full featured anti-spam filtering program that works with any email client. It runs as a local POP server that sits between your email program and your mail server and filters mail based on a built-in filtering mechanism. In addition, you can maintain a blocklist as well as a list of friends (their mail will never be filtered) and customize the filtering with a variety of settings and plug-ins. The program automatically configures popular email clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape etc.) to work with the filter. Among many other options, you can change the aggressiveness of the filter, block certain attachment types, block specific senders and also add your own spam words to look for. Spamihilator does not delete the spam right away but moves it to a recycle bin from where you can review it, restore items or permanently delete them. A very flexible and capable spam filtering system.

Matador Spam Fighter is a Bayesian filter add-in for MS Outlook 2003 that automatically moves spam into a junk mail folder. You can simply click a Spam or NoSpam button to categorize a message, from which it will automatically learn and adjust its filters. Matador Spam Fighter utilizes different filters and technologies that include Bayesian Filtering, Realtime DNS Black List, Content Checks, Realtime DNS White List, Bonded Sender Programs and Contacts Whitelists. The program is very easy to use and does not require any complicated configurations (or any for that matter). It works remarkably well and filtered almost all spam right from the start.

Iconix eMail ID is a client application that verifies the sender of an incoming email, and guarantees that the mail is actually coming from the company that it claims to be. The service works with companies that have registered with Iconix, which currently includes more than 1500 companies such as eBay, PayPal, Citibank, Amazon.com, Expedia, and many others. Whenever an email arrives from one of the known senders, it is authenticated, and an icon displayed next to the message that indicates the validity of the mail. Once Iconix is installed on your computer, it will automatically verify email messages whenever you use any of the supported services, there is no interface or additional configuration required. If are concerned about phishing scams involving major companies, give this software a try. Iconix eMail ID supports IE and Firefox and works with popular webmail accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Hotmail and others as well as Outlook Express.

SpamAware is an Outlook/Outlook Express add-in that uses the SpamAssassin engine to score email as it arrives in your inbox, and marks potential spam with a tag in the subject line or automatically moves it to a junk mail folder. SpamAware also supports Blacklist/Whitelist entries and can automatically add people you communicate with to the Whitelist. Other features include integrated virus scanning (powered by ClamAV), RBL lookup and more.

Junkanoo monitors your POP3 mail account and marks or deletes spam before it is downloaded to your Inbox. It uses a set of filters that can detect many common spam techniques such as hyperlinks in the mail, empty sender addresses, odd characters, images and more. It also includes a whitelist and blacklist to delete or exclude specified senders, as well as an option to exclude mails with certain keywords from being filtered. Junkanoo can also be used to send new email messages or to reply to incoming messages without the need to launch your email program.

K9 is an anti-spam email filtering application that works in conjunction with your regular POP3 email program and automatically classifies incoming emails as spam (junk email) or non-spam. The program uses intelligent statistical analysis that can result in extremely high accuracy over time and eliminates the need for maintaining dozens of rules or constant updates to be downloaded. K9 learns from what you are considering spam and will automatically tag all future emails that match the pattern. You can then set up rules (in Outlook or Outlook Express etc.) to delete or move the spam-tagged messages. The initial results will be moderate, however, after processing a few dozen emails, K9 will detect a very large percentage of the spam and further improve accuracy over time. The advantage of this is that the program is able to filter spam based on your personal email statistics, rather than a generic or global list. The interface allows you to view your mail history and change the status for certain messages, thereby automatically updating the filter settings. Additional features include whitelist and blacklist, long-term statistics and more. K9 does not delete any messages automatically , but only tags them for further processing. A very accurate and highly customizable spam filtering method, that does however require some familiarity with email accounts.

SpamWeasel gets rid of spam before it arrives in your inbox. It acts as a local POP server that filters spam according to both objective and personal criteria. It can delete or archive it while placing an optional warning notice on any suspected spam mail it allows through to your mailbox. When suspect spam mail is marked for rejection, you can delete it directly at the ISP even before it reaches your mailbox. Alternatively, Archive Viewing allows you to collect and divert unwanted mail away from your active mailbox and action or delete it at leisure. The program arrives preconfigured for many common spammers and uses flexible rules to identify spam while permitting a range of user-defined actions including passing, blocking, labeling, deleting, archiving, viewing sorting and re-delivery and works with any client. SpamWeasel supports multiple POP accounts.

MailWasher Free is a spam detection and mail preview tool that allows you to check the mail on the server and delete any spam before you download it to your local computer. It can notify you when new mail arrives and automatically mark suspicious messages, so you can preview and delete them. There are 3 levels of spam detection, and you can specify your own filters. MailWasher also offers the option to exclude your friends from spam checking and check mail against public blacklists. The program requires you to create your own spam filters, without them, the spam detection is poor. If you want to create your own mail filters, give MailWasher a try. However, if you are looking for effective out-of-the-box spam filtering, you should look elsewhere. The free version is limited to one POP3 email account, and has several features disabled.

E_Cloaker is an anti-spam tool for webmasters. It allows you to take pro-active measures to avoid spam by crypting your email (mailto) links in a way that is is not extracted by email extraction robots. The program is very simple and easy to use, just type in the email address to be used, the alternative text, that is visible to the visitor and click the Make Code button. E_Cloaker also displays a test window that allows you to test the generated link, to make sure that it is actually working.