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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME I would have been happy if iHateSpam had cut my junk mail total in half. But in fact it slashed the total down at least 99 percent. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 iHateSpam: Getting rid of junk mail with a few clicks and $20July 10, 2002 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard Getting rid of spam with a few clicks and $20 Windows users, listen up: Would you pay $20 to get rid of spam for good? Unless you're crazy about junk mail, don't waste a minute. Head off to www.sunbelt-software.com and download a new spam-blocking program called iHateSpam. You can try it for free or you can buy it right from the Sunbelt Software Web site. iHateSpam is only for Windows PCs (all versions, including XP). It works with the e-mail program Microsoft gives away with Windows, Outlook Express, and with Outlook, the heavy-duty mail software used in many offices and homes. A version for AOL's mail software is coming soon. iHateSpam works within your e-mail software to get rid of spam before it shows up in your Inbox. It uses its own list (updated automatically) of known spammers and known spam phrases to determine what is spam and what is not. Letters that are identified as spam are banished to their own folders, where you can check them now and then or just delete them every few days. iHateSpam asks you to create a list of "Friends" exempt from spam blocking -- it's pretty much automatic, involving nothing more than checkmarks you can add next to the names of people in your address book and in some of your mail folders -- and it lets you add names to that list at any time. You can also add to a list of non-friends -- senders whose mail will be detoured no matter what. iHateSpam also lets you bounce mail back to the sender with a single click. This is much better than trying to reply to such messages, since bounced mail tells the sender you don't exist. (Yes, I realize this sounds shady or illegal, but it's perfectly legal to refuse mail in this way.) (A bug in Windows 95, 98 and Me keeps the bounce function from working in those versions of Windows, but it works fine under Windows 2000 and Windows XP.) I tested iHateSpam on my main Windows PC, running Outlook 2000 under Windows 2000. It was easy to install and took only a few minutes to set up. I was tired from a day of bicycling when I installed iHateSpam, so I had a good chance to see if the program required any special knowledge or techniques (both of which were in short supply in my weary body). I was glad to see that the user didn't have to know anything esoteric to get iHateSpam running. How well does it work? Let me explain something first. I get a lot of mail, much more than most people do. About half my mail is spam. On a good day -- or a bad day, I think I should say -- I usually receive more than 100 pieces of spam. When I'm foolish enough to actually count all the spam, from dawn to dusk, I sometimes tally up more than 200. That was before I installed iHateSpam. My spam count so far for the first four days I've been using iHateSpam is two. I added both senders to my "Enemies" list, so I expect I'll never hear from them again. In four days I would have had to deal with 400 to 800 pieces of junk mail. Instead, all I saw were two letters. The rest were quarantined, and all I had to do was zap them from the "jail" that kept them away from polite society. I would have been happy if iHateSpam had cut my junk mail total in half. But in fact it slashed the total down at least 99 percent. Better yet, it is giving me back the time that spammers had stolen from me. I can't imagine booting up without this incredible software. |