Looking for a good spam blocker

[goldfish]

I'm looking for a good spam blocker, I am sick of very annnoying e-mails offering me Viagra, mortgage refinancing, and pr0n.

Since people at the lounge probably have experience with particular types / ones that work well / ones to avoid, any information is apreciated. Thanks!

[NiteFox]

I'm looking for a good spam blocker,

Yeah. Never check your e-mail :)

Personally, I use Cloudmark's (http://www.cloudmark.net to my recollection) SpamNet to filter the crap out.

[vor_lord]

Are you running on Windows? Your platform changes your options, and right now there are a bunch.

Right now I'm using SpamAssassin on Linux. It's done well for me for a long time, but I keep hearing that some of the other ones out there are working better. I'm planning to give SpamBayes a shot (I'm currently using SpamAssassin to help me collect some training data)

It works with both Windows and UNIX type systems, unlike SpamAssassin.

Anyone tried it, or have a better suggestion?

[protoshoggoth]

The mail client in mozilla (www.mozilla.com) includes basic filtering (i.e., delete mail with 'viagra' in it) as well as more sophisticated Bayesian filtering options. Though it sounds good, I can't personally vouch for the Bayesian stuff, I haven't used it. My ISP (earthlink) does a good job of filtering with its Spaminator service, and what remains I can mostly catch with the simple filters.

And of course Mozilla is free. It's browser component also offers a number of ways to make web-browsing less annoying.

[vor_lord]

Yes, I use phoenix (the future mozilla) for my browsing. It's particularly good for browsing forums like this using tabbed windows, and you don't have to suffer another pop up.

I have several friends who swear by the Bayesian filtering in the Mozilla mail client. I've always opted for non-GUI mail clients so I haven't tried it.

[DeeBye]

If you are looking for just a mail client, and don't want to install an entire browser, you should check out Thunderbird.

Mozilla is branching out and separating its browser (Firebird), from its mail client (Thunderbird). You can use both, or either. It's up to you.

I have not personally tried Thunderbird, but if it's anything like Firebird it's a quality product.

Also, Slashdot posted an article a few days ago that might interest you.

Seven Spam Filters Compared

The filters tested includes Bayesian Mail Filter, Bogofilter, dbacl, Quick Spam Filter, SpamAssassin, SpamProbe, and SPASTIC.

[whyBish]

I can't personally vouch for the Bayesian stuff

Bayesian filtering works well, especially if the algorithm includes the header info with the message body.

Incidentally, I believe Microsoft has a patent on bayesian spam filtering, even though it is not a novel idea, and there are known implementations of it well before Microsoft claimed they came up with it... they don't even use it in hotmail, and in their latest PC software they actually hook in to third party providers to do filtering (i.e. the third party component gives the email a spam ranking) :huh:

[Zedd]

I've used Thunderbird. The early builds (0.1, iirc) were great, but I had some problems with 0.2+, so I haven't touched it since.

That said, its built in spamblocker worked nearly perfectly for me, and I'm planning on installing it again, once some of the kinks are ironed out.

[whyBish]

Also while I'm thinking of spam, a NZ spammers details were recently released on the net (it made the news). Apparently the spammer felt harrassed :blink:

Australia is looking at passing anti-spam laws that would make it an offence to send unsolicited email. (If anyone from aussie has a link to a report with detail on this, I would love to know... implementation and policing would be hard I suspect)