Yesterday, I wrote about the curse of junk mail (SPAM) and why it keeps showing up in our in-boxes. I also promised to give you information on a free software program to automatically remove it from your in-box when it comes in. In fact, I am going to give you two free solutions.
But first, let me back track a little bit. As I said yesterday, I get 500-600 pieces of junk mail per day. The reason is that I have had the same e-mail address for about nine years. And, because so many people and legitimate organizations have this address, I don't want to change it. Rather than manually delete all this junk mail everyday or change my e-mail address, I chose to use a junk mail filtering system.
About a year ago, I tried a junk mail filtering software called "Junk-Out." After a free 30 day trial, I liked it so much that I bought it and installed it in all my computers. Except for my main desktop computer, it is still working fine. A few days ago, my main computer suffered a crash and my Junk-Out software stopped working. I worked with their tech support who suggested some possible solutions, but they only partially worked. Then for some reason, the Junk-Out tech support stopped answering my e-mails on my problem.
After two days of manually deleting junk, I decided to look for another solution. And being the cheapskate that I am, I started looking for freebees. I soon came across a software solution called, "Spamfighter." After doing some investigation, I realized they were a legitimate firm that started in Europe and have only recently expanded their operations to America. The reviews on their software were good, so decided to try it. The software is for use with either Outlook or Outlook Express.
They offer two versions of their software...a free version and a "Pro" version for $29.95. After reviewing the two, I went for the free version, and for most people that should be fine. Not only is the software free, but so are the updates. The only caveat to that is that you need to check manually for updates for now. It will not be supplied to you automatically although that is supposed to change in the near future.
After removing the old Junk-Out software, I installed Spamfighter. It was so easy that I thought something might have gone wrong. It didn't. I read their tutorial, but found it really wasn't necessary. The program just works. It started detecting spam immediately when the first e-mail check occurred.
Most spam detection software doesn't erase spam, it just takes it out of your e-mail in-box and moves it to another box, in this case, a box called "spamfighter." It is up to you to erase the mail in that box. I usually do it twice a day.
Back to Spamfighter. All spam filtering software has to be trained. It ususally has enough initial training to start removing about 70%-75% effectively. But there is some spam that looks close enough to genuine e-mail's that it doesn't automatically detect (sort of a "better safe than sorry" approach). That is where you come in.
When you find junk mail that was left in your in-box after filtering, you just press the "Block" button and the offending mail is moved to a junk mail box and your software becomes trained not to accept that one any more. In the case of Spamfighter, it also sends a copy to the Spamfighter headquarters where it can be used to help other people.
I have been using Spamfighter for three days now. It started out deleting about 70% of my junk mail as soon as it was installed. After three days of training, it is up to about 85%. My experiences with Junk-Out taught me that it takes about a week to fully train your software. Even then is about 99% effective, but that is good enough.
During this first week, you should be looking at the Spamfighter box occasionally to see if some legititmate e-mail that you may want is being filtered. In my case, there are a couple of companies that send me sales flyers via e-mail that can be perceived as junk mail. For these e-mail's, there is an "Unblock" button that tells the software you want these mails in the future.
If you use Outlook or Outlook Express, you might want to consider Spamfighter. The price is sure right.
Earlier, I promised you a second solution, so here it is:
Why not consider discarding Outlook or Outlook Express and consider using the new free e-mail software from Mozilla, called "Thunderbird." Not only is it receiving great reviews, it has its own built-in junk mail filter. There is a new review from "PC World" that just raves about it also. To read it, go to:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,119038,00.asp
I hope these articles on junk mail have been helpful.
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