Does the new Spam filter from Cloudmark work or is it just another sca

Does the new Spam filter from Cloudmark work or is it just another scam?
- Carol

This question was answered on July 1, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Many companies have tried, in vain, to create tools that help in the ‘War on Spam’, but most are ineffective or too restrictive.

For example, AOL only provides address blocking, which means that the Spammer must use the same address over and over again (which they don’t) in order for it to work Outlook and Outlook Express provide an effective message-filtering tool that works through keyword-based rules that the user must manually create, which requires knowledge, diligence and time.

A new concept for fighting Spam from a company called Cloudmark has surfaced that uses the power and speed of Peer-to-Peer networking (the basis of Napster and other file sharing utilities) to compile a powerful and (more importantly) accurate database of Spam Think of it as a community effort to fight Spam!

SpamNet, which is a free download at www.cloudmark.com, is in its beta release (testing version) and currently works with Outlook 2000 or Outlook 2002/XP only A version for Outlook Express is in the works (AOL uses a proprietary mail interface, so it may be a while before you see anything for AOL.)

The way it works is that users install the filter as an add-on in Outlook, which automatically starts filtering known Spam messages whenever the mail is checked Users then participate in fighting back by simply clicking on the ‘block’ icon whenever they receive an unsolicited message This sends the information to a central database that helps build the ‘community filter’ that all users access every time they check for new mail By comparing every incoming message with the ‘community filter’, which is ever evolving and updating, it can effectively fight the scourge that is Spam

This simple but ingenious process allows Cloudmark to create a filtering database that is constantly updating and can respond to new Spam attacks within minutes.

Any message that is identified as Spam on your system is not deleted, but rather sent to a folder called ‘Spam’ just in case a real message gets filtered I tested it on over 6000 messages and got nothing more than a handful of ‘real messages’ that were filtered Any message that is improperly identified as Spam can be quickly returned to the Inbox by going to the Spam folder, clicking on the message, then clicking the Unblock icon.

The power of this system is in the number of users and the ability to gather information quickly and accurately across a large number of e-mail accounts It’s a community of users that is essentially helping one another by participating in the process, so the more users they acquire, the better and faster the system works.

Our payment for using this free filter is simply to click on the Block icon every time a new type of Spam hits our Inbox, which in turn helps all the other users on the network.

Spamnet is easy to use, effective and absolutely the best thing that I have ever used to fight the ‘War on Spam’ If you use Outlook as your e-mail client, this free download is a must have program.