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Slam That Spam

By Robert Luhn

Compared with the trashing a virus or hacker can do to your PC, spam seems so, well, benign. But virus attacks don't happen every day, whereas junk e-mail does. The productivity you lose in sifting through this digital detritus, plus the hijacked server space and bandwidth, can put a dent in your budget or threaten your sanity.

Many ISPs offer customers spam-filtering services, but these aren't always vigilant. "Even [ISPs] with a good abuse desk find it difficult to disconnect a customer--even a spammer--in the current economic climate," says Dave Rand of the Mail Abuse Prevention System, an antispam advocacy group. And ISPs that have antispam technology still let plenty of junk through. For example, a seldom-used AOL screen name that we monitored received nearly a dozen junk messages each day. After forwarding the messages to AOL, adding the spammers' names to the account's filters, and unsubscribing from mailing lists, we still received the same amount of spam.

Going Vegetarian

You probably can't rid yourself of the junk entirely, but you can reduce the flow by choosing an ISP with a tough antispam policy, mastering your e-mail program's filter function, and being careful about which Web sites and services you sign up with. For detailed advice on how to proceed, follow the tips in " Spam Begone" and in June's " "How to Take Back Your Privacy."

You can also enlist the aid of programs and Web-based services that filter out the remaining spam, check sender addresses against a "blacklist" of spammers, or provide heavily filtered or temporary e-mail addresses. We tried four products--Contact Plus's Spam Buster 1.9, Crystal Office Systems' MailSweep 3.05, High Mountain Software's SpamEater Pro 3.56, and McAfee.com's SpamKiller 2.87--and ran them on several active e-mail accounts. Most of them effectively nabbed the real spam and spam-like messages we sent to the accounts, without zapping innocent e-mail, but we recommend SpamKiller because it's the easiest to use.

Antispam Tools

Except for SpamKiller, these four programs work only with POP3 e-mail accounts (which excludes AOL, MSN, some corporate e-mail systems, and Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail). Most of them compare return addresses with various blacklists, and they provide filters to block messages by address, domain, country, and size. All four programs scan your in-box (on demand or automatically) for suspicious mail and either flag it or delete it.

SpamKiller emerged as as our Best Buy choice, by a whisker, thanks to its clean interface and a superb wizard that finds your e-mail program and imports the address book (labeling everyone in it a nonspammer). The software is a snap to run: Buttons activate basic features (like checking mail), while a toolbar lets you scan your in-box or edit filters. And SpamKiller is the only program of the four that also works with the MAPI e-mail used in Microsoft Exchange systems. It doesn't use a blacklist of known spammers, but it does have a load of preconfigured filters that were effective in canning the junk.

Coming in a close second is Spam Buster, which uses its own blacklist. The tabbed dialog boxes where you configure the program are straightforward, and you can select filter rules from simple drop-down menus. But Spam Buster's wizard isn't quite as intelligent as SpamKiller's.

Spam-haters who want total control should try SpamEater Pro. You can craft rules and filters any way you wish, check a half-dozen blacklists, and have messages re-sent if you suspect that legitimate e-mail got swept up with the spam. But SpamEater is hard to configure, requiring lots of puzzling over arcane settings.

MailSweep, a mail-reading program with antispam features, fared less well. It doesn't have prefab filters or blacklists, and you can't create complex filters. While it caught some spam, it didn't always delete messages when instructed to do so.

Antispam at Your Service

Web antispam services block junk mail before it gets to you, and they work with all types of e-mail. We tried out two free services, Despammed and Spamgourmet. Both of them provide e-mail addresses for signing up with Web sites, newsletters, or forums.

The Despammed service filters incoming mail and sends whatever remains to your real e-mail address. The site has its own filtering technology but also checks several blacklists. Spamgourmet forwards mail without filtering, but each Spamgourmet address is good for only 20 messages. If you sign up for something you don't like, you can simply let that particular e-mail address expire.

While the free services work as advertised, the software packages offer greater control. If you have a POP3 or a MAPI e-mail account and a serious distaste for spam, spend the $30 on SpamKiller.

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