Spam Filters 2007: SpamBayes?

codger

I know this crops up from time to time but I wondered what's the latest experience of MSErs??

I've been using the free version of the highly-praised SpamFighter but six months on and it's still not "learning" very much, spam emails of similar text content to others already blocked / black-listed keep coming through.

No big deal to mark them as 'blocked' but it's irritating to have SpamFighter's advertising at the bottom of every one of my outgoing emails giving the impression that it alone has stopped the spam.

(Yes, I could have the SpamFighter promotions removed from my outgoing emails by opting for the paid-for version. . . but as it won't work any better than the free one, what's the point?)

I've tried plenty of other anti-spam software in the past like MailWasher and SpamBully but liked SpamFighter's integration into Outlook Express rather than as a proxy server.

Anyway. I've just downloaded something called SpamBayes --

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

because I've admired other software projects from sourceforge.

Not sure if SpamBayes is used by anyone else here????

And does anyone have alternative up-to-date recommendations??

Thanks!

Shambler

I use spambayes and it cuts out 90% of spam.

Does not seem to learn that emails with pictures of lopsided text are spam though, but on the whole it is a great help and it's free.

codger

Thanks Shambler.

Must admit, I'd never heard of spambayes before -- found it by accident when hunting on Sourceforge for something quite different.

I'll definitely give it a try, not least because I've just checked my emails (and found the MSE alert re your thread post) and found another invitation to accept $500 prize money in an online poker game I've never visited.

Reading it in 'properties' (i.e., without opening it) the wording is well-nigh identical to almost a dozen of this nature that have come through in the past fortnight -- not one of which has been picked up by SpamFighter, all of which have had to be blocked.

I can't imagine spambayes doing any worse than this.

esuhl

I found Spambayes to be pretty good when integrated with Outlook. The only problem is Outlook seems to corrupt a my inbox every few months, so I had a look at compiling Spambayes for generic IMAP use with the Calypso email client... I gave up in the end!!!

codger

Oh Lor, esuhl. . . That'd all be beyond me!

Pretty encouraging though, these user experiences of spambayes, how odd though that this freeware doesn't seem to be that well known.

BillScarab

You could just try Thunderbird as your mail client. I find it's better than Outlook and the built in Spam filters are pretty good.

superscaper

Or you could change the way you use your email. Buy a domain, make your main login address completely random and then setup specific addresses to forward to that address. If you give each company their own unique address eg amazon@mydomain.co.uk then it also gives you traceability for any incoming spam. Using this method I get zero spam without any spam filters. If I were to get any to a particular address I can just delete the address and use a new one eg amazon1@mydomain.co.uk.

R0CKY

I use spampal. A free tool that imtegrates with OE and catches 300 spam for me each day, a few still slip through, but most importantly, very very few false positives.

There forums have tech heads who can come up wth custom filters to catch troublesome spam. Very powerful, but also easy to set up.

codger

Thanks everyone: all this help really is greatly appreciated!

Super: yup, I did that, had "unlimited" email addresses when my ISP was Vista, but then I wound up creating so many, even I got confused. . . Doh.

Rocky: I used SpamPal a few years ago in its early incarnation, so will certainly have a look at it again -- thanks for pointing me in that direction: the way so much software changes / improves (or, in the case of SpamFighter, seems to decline -- in my experience) was the reason for my OP, because up-to-date evaluations are so important.

(I've a friend who still pays an annual fee for renewal of some anti virus software he purchased long ago and which I've never heard of and can't remember. Still. He's had no problems to date and seems very happy. Hardly surprising, really: I think he goes online once a year to send a Christmas e-card to Australian relatives. . .)

DKLS

Spam Bayes linked to Outlook, catches about 95% of my spam, works wonderfully in comparison to others I have used.

codger

Thanks DK: am going to trial run Spambayes for a month, see how it performs.

As I posted earlier, I've always been fond of SourceForge and Open Source projects; I've had a few from the various little developers and chucked in a donation as and when.

Although it's not the case that freeware is better than paid-for software, I have found (over the years) that with certain types of software, it's the "little guys" who I can rely upon for a super product -- not necessarily the big players (or the commercial rip-off merchants.)

Right. Am off to play with some music, thanks to CDex and DeepBurner. . .

Case rests!