Spamkiller

Got a problem with spam? Getting too many unless email messages from scummy, unethical, immoral spammers whose only purpose in life seems to be to harass innocent people like you and me? If you are anything like me you've gotten fed up with all of the junk from these bottom-feeders.

You can do something about it, like I did. You can get a product called Spamkiller.

Like all similar products, this is a solution to a problem which is not easily solvable with existing technology. Spamkiller essentially compares the emails that you receive against a series of rules describing who you can and cannot receive email from. 

Friends may be set to match an email address, an entire domain or a mailing list. Filters (which stop email from arriving) can match just about anything, including phrases within messages and subjects, and any field within the email header.

One of the great strengths of this product is it's automatic update capability. When this feature is enabled Spamkiller checks the vendor web site to see if there are new spam filters available. If so, these are downloaded and added to the program's filters. This allows known spammers to be automatically blocked.

One of the weaknesses of this product is the complaint feature. This gives you the ability to complain about spam to ISPs and web hosts. On the surface this appears to be a great feature, but in reality it is poorly defined and badly implemented. I have read many reports of innocent people needing to defend themselves needlessly due to invalid spam reports sent by this product. In fact, the complaint feature is so poorly implemented that I would recommend strongly against it's use under any circumstances (the spam reporting feature of spamcop.net is much better defined and far stronger).

However, the filters are very strong and work exceptionally well. Before I installed Spamkiller, I was receiving over 500 emails a day, of which perhaps 400 were spam. Now I receive just a few spam messages per day.

Keep in mind, however, that constant tweaking is required. Every day I spend a couple of minutes checking those messages that Spamkiller has determined to be spam (just to be sure it didn't block something important). I also have to occasionally define a new filter to block some spam that got through the rules.

Thus, if you need to find a product to block spam, then this is a good choice. At least it works with only minor intervention now and then.