HOME
TOPICS
ABOUT ME
MAIL
iHateSpam filters out about 85 percent of
the spam that comes into my Windows inbox with no effort
from me. On my OS X Mac, Apple Mail picks up cues from
every letter it checks, and has the best spam blocker
around.
|
|
technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and
commentaries, continuously available online since
1983
T e c h n o f i l e
'iHate Spam' still the best for blocking spam in
Windows; Apple Mail does well on OS X
May 11, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
Last week I explained how spammers get
your e-mail address. It's time to look at ways to block
spam under Windows and Mac OS X.
When I reported on spam blockers for
Windows PCs last July, I raved about a program I'd just
started to use called iHateSpam. The software is even
better now, and remains my first choice for Windows PCs
running Outlook. (My usual warning: Outlook, the e-mail and
personal organizing software from Microsoft, is not the
same as Outlook Express, the free e-mail program that comes
with Windows.)
I run iHateSpam on my Windows 2000 PC.
It filters out about 85 percent of the spam that comes into
my Outlook inbox with no effort from me. I literally
don't have to do anything unless I want to fine-tune
the way iHateSpam makes its decisions.
iHateSpam ($20; available in stores or
from www.sunbelt-software.com)
learns as it goes. If it guesses wrong and lets spam
through, you can teach it to recognize that kind of spam by
clicking a button labeled "Is Spam!" on the
Outlook toolbar. Likewise, if you check the spam folder and
find mail that should not be there, you click a button
labeled "Not Spam!" to tell iHateSpam to let that
sort of letter through.
iHateSpam has a complete override
system, too, for mail that should always get through no
matter what (such as a note from your broker) and mail that
you never want to see, such as mail from that pesky
sister-in-law who forwards a dozen joke e-mails a day. (You
can tell her you never saw her letters.)
It would be hard to beat iHateSpam as
the ideal spam blocker for Outlook, which is designed to
work well with add-on programs. But Outlook Express
can't be integrated into a spam blocker as well as
Outlook can, leaving antispam programmers to find
alternative ways of handling way their software works with
Outlook Express.
But don't let that stop you from
trying the Outlook Express version of iHateSpam. It's
been improved quite a bit since the first release last
year.
(For the next few months, you can get
iHateSpam free. Go to the Sunbelt site at www.sunbelt-software.com
for information.)
I've left out a few other Windows
spam blockers that have what I consider a major flaw. They
create and share blacklists of spammers. Addresses are
added to the circulating blacklist any time a user decides
that a particular piece of e-mail is spam.
This might seem like a great idea to all
of us who get spam, but it's actually a very bad way of
blocking spam. A single mistake -- clicking at the wrong
time, for example, so that a legitimate letter gets marked
as spam -- can quickly multiply when user blacklists are
shared.
I'm leaving the best for last. If
you're considering switching to a Mac, here's
something that might help: The built-in mail software on
modern Macintosh computers has the best spam blocking I
have ever encountered. It's integrated so well into the
mail software that you might not even realize it's
there, so be sure to open the preferences menu to see if
it's active.
The spam blocking in Apple Mail picks up
cues from every letter it checks. It gets better day by
day, runs unobtrusively and seldom misidentifies spam.
You need to upgrade to OS X
"Jaguar" if your version of Apple Mail lacks a
spam filter. You can order the newer operating system at a
local Mac store or from Apple's own store, through its
Web site.
|
|