Useful Advice on How to Choose Good Anti-spam Filter

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	8 Vote 0	Useful Advice on How to Choose Good Anti-spam Filter
Contributed by: Aurelija Date: 2008-10-03

We have recently introduced you to anti-spam filters and provided you certain classification together with the most important features of this software. This time I would like to give you a piece of advice on how to choose anti-spam filter software that best suits your interests.

Before choosing a filter it is important to decide if the filtering should take place at the user's computer or at the server level.

Large organizations that do not want their employees to be bothered by spam should choose server based software. The main advantage of a server-side solution is that with a good system the spam never reaches the employee. Unfortunately there are many poor server-side filters available that for example require the employees to manually search for any classification mistakes.

Using a filter directly on the user's computer can be beneficial because email is always locally stored and therefore full control over the email remains. Furthermore the software can learn user-specific spam recognition allowing the filtering to be custom tailored to the user. Because the need to actively check for mistakes this is still quite time intensive though making it only an interesting solution for home and small business users.

When you have already chosen what type of filter to select, you should now pay attention to the following aspects:

Feature	Description
Compatibility	Check if this filter is compatible with their email program and Internet mail provider. Most integrated spam filters only work with Outlook and Outlook Express. They don't support alternative email clients like Eudora or Mozilla's Thunderbird. Web-based spam blockers like OnlyMyEmail can work with almost any e-mail client.
Easy to use	It is important that the software program is easy for you to use and navigate. Anti-spam software is worthless if you can't figure out how to use it or if it has features you do not understand.
Customization	The features and tools the software offers should enable you to customize the program to suit your own needs. It should be flexible in letting you set your own rules regarding which email to permit into your inbox and what you want to filter out or block.
Whitelists	Ideally, it should enable you to set up whitelist, which will indicate particular email and ISP addresses that should always be delivered to the inbox. This will ensure that legitimate email from trusted sources will never be filtered out or accidentally deleted.
Easy to install	The software should install with ease, with zero or minimal errors encountered during set up. Some anti-spam software requires registration, additional downloads or other steps to be taken before it can be used.
Stability	The software you choose should be stable in its release and workings. One way to check this is to look at the release package and view what the programmers or company states is the last stable release. It is probably not in your interests to buy software that is still in the beta phase, particularly if you are not familiar with the program.
Access	To keep track of what is happening, it is important that you can have direct access to all blocked messages or to a report listing all blocked messages. Although you should hardly ever need this feature, there is nothing more frustrating than not knowing what happened with your message (or what did not happen).
Performance	The spam filtering software should offer dependable performance and be compatible with your other programs.
Easy to correct	Whenever a classification mistake is made, this should be easily correctable. You should be able to release the message so it is normally delivered to your email application.
Test	Always test the filter for at least 2 weeks (most companies offer free trials). The antispam market is quickly getting crowded with many poor filters resulting in solutions that are more costly than the spam problem they are supposed to solve. Try to find out if you are not dealing with a reseller during the trial and always do direct business with the antispam experts themselves.

In case you would like to compare several current anti-spam filters, you can follow one of the following links and look through the anti-spam filters reviews.

ConsumerSearch Review

Review from TopTenReviews

Remember that no matter which filter you choose, it is necessary to keep it up-to-date in order to protect your computer from increasing spammers' attacks.

Resources:
TopTenReviews on spam Filters
Which Spam Filter Suits Me?
What to look for in Spam Filter Software
Important Features of Anti-spam filters