Email spam has reached epidemic levels. Many active Internet users and online business owners receive hundreds of junk emails each day and have to spend hours trying to dig out the "real" emails. So it's no wonder that programmers have created a lot of paid and free spam blockers.
There are three basic types of traditional antispam software...
1) Plug-ins for email clients. These antispam programs run on your computer and require all received spam to be downloaded before they start sorting it.
2) Standalone applications. These spam blockers also run on your computer and communicate with the email server multiple times each hour to check your POP mailbox for spam and delete it. They constantly run in the background, using up resources and bandwidth.
3) Server-side email spam filters. Many ISPs and email servers (HotMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.) have installed email filtering software that scans email for certain triggers, which may include certain phrases, formatting, and aggressive writing styles. However, many unfair marketers have learned to fool spam filters, while a lot of legitimate emails are blocked by them.
By the way, if you're sending email newsletters or promotions (opt-in!), instead of just hoping for the best, use SiteSell's free SpamCheck. Send a copy of your email to spamcheck-sb@sitesell.net and, in seconds, you'll receive the SpamCheck report with recommendations on how to change the content of your email in order to fool spam filters. Only make sure the subject line starts with the word TEST (in upper case) - if it doesn't, your email will be interpreted as spam and deleted.
There are several companies that have found gaps in the antispam software market and developed new classes of spam blockers...
CoffeeCup Spam Blocker
It's a program that runs on your computer and checks your email first (before your e-mail client). It removes spam right from the mail server so you won't see it in your regular inbox. CoffeeCup Spam Blocker works with any POP3 email account and can check multiple email accounts.
You can review the suspicious emails and choose to keep or delete them. You can also send "Bounce Back" answers to the spammers telling them that your email address doesn't exist so they remove it from their lists. Spam Blocker automatically removes attached viruses, and can block unwanted email by country, email address, domain, and keywords using the predefined blacklists (or you can create your own).
To allow email from people you trust, you can add them to your Friend List. You will then receive messages from those email addresses uninterrupted. You can also import your address book from Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, or any text file.
You can download a free trial
here.
Cloudmark Desktop
Cloudmark Desktop is a spam filtering plug-in for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. But, instead of relying on spam filters analyzing keywords, patterns, or heuristics, this spam blocker relies on the common sense of more than 1 million members of its spam-fighting community.
Using this simple concept, Cloudmark Desktop is easy to use and blocks over 98% of spam and fraud from your Inbox. After installation, it starts working immediately without any configuration. All you have to do is click the Block Spam button on the Cloudmark toolbar if a spam message slips through to your Inbox...
How it works
Unlike other spam blockers, Cloudmark Desktop is based entirely on user feedback: whenever somebody blocks or unblocks a specific message, the system learns from that action. Individually your action isn't very powerful, but the collective actions of all members of the Cloudmark community block over 98% of all spam and fraud sent out on the Internet.
Every time a spam message makes it through the Cloudmark filter, you have the opportunity to mark it as spam, and that information is reported back to their data base that is the foundation of the system. Every message there is analyzed and its sender is assigned a reputation index.
The system is completely automated, which means that it operates immediately in response to real-time feedback - once a few trusted members mark a particular message as spam, no others will even see that message. The more people working together to report spam, the more spam they stop.
Cloudmark rates every user according to quality of past submissions - each member earns a reputation, which is based on how accurately they identify spam and legitimate messages. Those who unblock spam or fraud messages while thousands of others block them, lose trust within the community.
This spam blocker works with Outlook and Outlook Express on Windows 2000/XP/Vista.
You can download a free 15-day trial of the product
here.
- Computer Internet Security - protection against network security attacks.
- Advanced and free spam blockers.
- Remote computer access software.
- Fast and free Internet accelerators.
- Satellite Internet access - high-speed two-way satellite Internet connection is now available.
- Online faxing - how to send and receive faxes by email.
- Online data backups - a new method of data protection.
- Easy website building tool.
- Improving business writing skills.
- Dedicated IP hosting - benefits of using a static over shared IP address.
- Avoid my hosting mistakes.
What's New
How to Create a Website
One-page guide for beginners.
Web site builders
Easy way to build a professional looking site for commercial use or just for fun.