As the spam problem grows worse, the number of anti-spam solutions on the market has grown at a dizzying rate. There are now so many products that some vendors have resorted to spamming in an attempt to advertise their products.
Unfortunately, there is no one fix for the problem. Some spam filters sit in between your mail client and server, some take over your software and irritatingly label all of your mail as safe or unsafe. Most programs I have seen have been fairly ineffective. As quickly as a filter is developed, a spammer will come up with a sneaky way to get around it - hence the infinite spellings for words such as Viagra, Xanax and mortgage.
As our office uses Microsoft's Exchange Server for mail, many of the open-source, standards-based solutions are impractical. But during the past week, I have been using a solution developed specifically for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, and it has been surprisingly impressive.
Spamfighter, a Danish start-up, takes all the usual routes - blacklists to block what you do not want, whitelists to allow what you do and options to allow you to block specific domains.
There are two products: Spamfighter Pro, and the cut-down but free Spamfighter Standard.
Using the Block and Unblock buttons, you train Spamfighter to recognise new spam and ignore legitimate mail. What is more, those choices are registered with Spamfighter's home database, constantly improving the program's filters.
