After being online for 19 years now, and I barely changed my main email address for the past 7 years, I get a real large amount of spam emails. And I still remember the early days where I tried to filter out emails myself using the built in filter tools of email softwares in MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express and Qualcomm Eudora. There was also a period where I was using the email software included in StarOffice, and today I am a Thunderbird user. Way back then I had the patience to go through every spam email I got and make an associated filter for it. But spammers started being more creative, using wrong spellings and numbers as letters and slashes and backslashes like in \/ instead of using V. Some placing hidden HTML comments in between letters with random characters to be able to show no pattern to filter out. As spammers got smarter, the job of making your own filters just took too long to do.
With all the many spam tools in the market, so far, I am a good fan of SpamPal and has been using them for quite some time. And for free tools like this, when they are really good. I make it a point I donate some amount since I really appreciate the hard work they put into it. SpamPal runs on Microsoft Windows and stays in your system tray. You will have to change your POP3 settings on your email software to point to SpamPal. And SpamPal will connect to your email box. And for every email downloaded, it passes through several spam filter checks based on rules coming from spam databases like:
- Spamhaus SBL +XBL
- ORDB
- NJABL
- DSBL
- SPEWS
If an email is flagged as spam, it adds some email headers which you can use your email software to filter out this header and place in your own spam folder. Spam is not deleted right away, and is filtered to one folder. At least the segregation makes life easier. And in some rare occasions of spam filtering mistakes, you can add rules to your SpamPal by using the whitelist and blacklist.
Although SpamPal filter’s out spam email pretty well, you still get tons of email in there. And self inspecting them manually can be a tedious task where half or even more of you day is spent sniffing through your spam emails checking for errors. And this is where I like to use SpamAssassin SpamAsassin in conjunction with SpamPal. SpamAssassin SpamAssasin runs ideally on Linux servers running Apache although there are already versions to run on Microsoft Windows. SpamAssassin SpamAsasin while running on your email server, can filter out emails even before they reach your email client software. SpamAssassin has what they call the SpamBox if you wish to filter out emails and place all spam in an separate email box you can check and see if spam email was segregated well without error. I have been running this for about 2 years and I have always checked my SpamBox on SpamAssassin and so far it has done a good job. And today, I am officially stopping from checking my spambox and just letting all spam go straight to the trash.
Remember there is no perfect email spam software
Even though I am very happy with these two email softwares, there are still a lot of spam emails that may get through. But without them, the could be 90 times more. So far in the recent trend I see is, Viagra, pron, pharmaceutical, casino, poker spam seems to be filtered out well, but I have been getting a lot of penny stocks lately. They are getting through my spam filters, but it will just take a few more months before they get filtered out too. Although, spammers will never stop with their creative ways of spamming. So this is an endless battle of spam emails and spam filters.
Even if email spam filters cannot filter out spam perfectly. Using them to minimize spam is a good job already. And for me the best email spam filter out there today is SpamPal and SpamAssassin. But if you think there is a better one, feel free to comment on this post. (No comment spam please.)
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