anti spam program

Hi,

what is the best *FREE* anti spam program avaiable?
i've heard about mail washer, but it has an ad...

 

Hi Jucabala

I have been using MailWasher for weeks now on. It really has not advertisements, just it´s own banner. Really good software I say, go for it
http://www.mailwasher.net/

*Ari*

 

I have being trying popfile

http://popfile.sourceforge.net/.

It might be bit of a problem to setup if you are not used to playing around with browser connection settings since it used the web-browser as the interface. No problems though if you already know how to use HTTP proxies.

It's a trainable spam filter, you classify the first few emails into various folders and it analyses which words appear in spam emails and which don't .

For the mathematically inclined this filter uses Bayes theorem, and I have read that many commercial spam filters use this too.

The help file recommends training with 100 emails but generally it learns very fast.

I see that most people get a 98-100% accuracy.


Pros

1) You know exactly how the filter works compared to
the "heuristic checking" in mailwasher. Perhaps it even uses the same method, except on a group basis.

2) The email is downloaded directly to your computer, less security concerns since it is not routed to a third party server (some spam filters do this, not mailwasher i think)

3) You can use it to classify not only spam, but into any category you want. I have classifications for spam, work, emails from my website. You have to be consistent though when training.

4)personalised. What is spam to you is not spam to others, each spam filter is trained for your purposes. Also makes it harder for spammers to crack compared to a centralised spam filter shared by many, since they can't just get a copy of mailwasher and test to see if their spam gets through, since each user's filter is unique.

Cons

1) No default spam filter. You need to train it from the scratch. There is a obscure feature that allows you to feed emails collected though, but the author doesn't recommend it.

2)Does only POP but not IMAP. But neither does Mailwasher.. Mailwasher does hotmail though...

3)No "bounce" feature, probably useless feature anyway and may even alert the spammer that yours is a real account.

 

I've been using Mail Washer for a couple of days and it's ok. I miss the 'prettiness' of HTML, but that's the balance between security and convenience. So far I can't say that I've had any real problems with it, other than one filter/rule that I'm still trying to figure out. On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it about a 7; but the fact that it's free kicks it up to about an 8 or 8.5.

sk

 

I would agree about Mailwasher. It's fast, effective, and easy to use. However, I personally use the optional mail bounce feature sparingly!
The 'advertisements' are internal, referring only to Mailwasher itself (although free, the author would accept donations).

Gordon

 

Hi

i'm going to try mailwasher when i'm back home at night and about popfile i guess it won't work well with my mail client (nPOP).
But i'd like to have more suggestions.

 

One more.....

If you are not happy for bounching spam, there´s another free email dominator, EmC, nice feature too if you do not mind one small banner
http://www.abreuretto.com/anti-spam/indexi.htm
I have both, MailWasher and EmC, give a try

*Ari*

 

I would really prefer a small program (less than 500 Kb) and this EMC is almost 3 Mb

 

Hello,

Give a try to SpamPal : (345 Ko)
http://www.spampal.org.uk/download.html

Be cautious : there are some very agressive filters.
(see the DNSBL lists)

Use it a while with the standard rule they recommend (creating a spam mailbox).
When you have made you whitebox to prevent legitimate mails to get in, you might change the rule to suppress on the servers instead so you don't download the spams.

Cheers,

 

absolutely MailWasher for me also.

It's not hard to set up [in fact dead easy]

As for the "Ads", it only has it's own little scrolling message about the program. Not resource hungry anyway at all.

I would give it a definite 9/10. Saved my bacon from spam, etc. a lot of times.

Also the quote about reluctance in bouncing spam in above posts.

Why on earth would that be even NOT considered. Spam is spam is spam. BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE I say to the bloody mongrels.

I mean, if you know who the email is from, fine, if not, at least just double click the header and get a text preview then decide what to do with it. Can't get any easier then that.

 

I might be wrong on this point, but if I understand it correctly, the name that appears at the top could one day be yours or mine in somebody ELSE'S mailbox, if somehow a worm or virus got into OUR email account and as a result, "WE " ended up sending the thing. Not intentionally; but sometimes hackers and spammers run THEIR crap at the expense of people who don't even know their computer's have been compromised. That's basically how the DoA against GRC was mounted. Lots of innocent people on a cable network had their machines 'comandeered' and aimed at GRC's T-1 lines. Same with email; so that's why, I think, the suggestions were made to ease up on the bounce. I agree with that, and wish MailWasher had made that point a little more clear. But aside from some problems configuring a couple of rules, I'm getting used to it.

sk

 

That's absolutely true SK, but I did say you "look" at the email first, if it's unknown.

~ I mean, if you know who the email is from, fine, if not, at least just double click the header and get a text preview then decide what to do with it. ~

MailWasher does not automatically "Delete/Bounce" if it's marked as such, just informs you.

The BEST line of defence is what's between your ears. Use the old grey cells first, before letting something automatically do it if it's in the nature of emails.

You sure do not want to delete something you wanted, hence my original quote, view it safely within MailWasher first.

However, I will concede this may be a problem to someone who may receive lots of emails. Personally it's of no consequence to me, as I do not get that many, probably only around 30-40 each week. Mainly newsletters, anti-virus update alerts, etc. of that nature.

 

I submit the bounce option is a waste of time.

Most of the email headers are forged anyway, and it's hard to figure out where the email is coming from.

Some come from open relays...

Also if the bounce is not done correctly, it actually alerts the spammer that yours is a live account.

The biggest flaw with the "bounce" idea I think is that you assume the spammers keep track of which messages are bounced and remove them.

Given the cost of sending spams (almost zero per email), I don't think they care whether a message is bounced. They might even block all bounces alltogether.

Taking note of unsubcribe email is a different method though..

 

Bonsoir JacK!

I have tried SpamPal, works great!

Use it now instead of all other anti-spam software.

 

Hi JayK

Do not ever never unsubscribe SPAM, if that is what you exactly mean ....prefer ignore than do anything else.

'Ari*

 

I've always adhered to this principle myself, but somewhere along the line I read an article that seemed to be a straightforward honest account of exactly what happened when someone tested this out. I can't find the article now; and I'm too fuzzy on all of the details; but the bottom line was that according to his test he did not receive any increase in spam the way he'd expected to see. If I'm not mistaken, he didn't really see a noticeable decrease either. I wish I could have been more specific, but I was hoping maybe somebody else had seen what I'm talking about and could post so we could look at all the details. TIA.

sk

 

Hi Sk....

I was once spammed too bad. I had to study some things and I started reporting for spam to their own ISP´s. It really seems it helped alot. It is nasty to download **** on own personal computer . Let me say I really do not need viagra or enlarger neither women from east here. Today I receive approximately 75% less spam ( on my POP3 account I receive 100% less), I do not mean filters but real spamming has decreased indeed. I gather here some useful links, some of them I might add here later.

But one good advice I have for everyone: Do not ever never use Greetingwishesinternet services, neither anything it is related to this. It´s devils work only.

http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/harvest_project/

http://spam.abuse.net/

http://www.robertgraham.com/tools/mailtoencoder.html

http://spammingbureau.com/

http://spamlaws.com/eu.html

http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso

http://www.spamcon.org/

friendliest *Ari*

 

You never know.....

 

Smokey a good one . Nice weekend to you too .

 

Very interesting post, Krusty!



sk

 

But seriously, Krusty...
thanks for the links and the advise. I'll definitely check them out and post my results.

sk

 

Paul

Yes sir, but it was just because of nasty spam, I am not a pottymouth myself . apologizes anyway.

Have a nice weekend *Ari*


Fixed ok

 

Ditto.

sk