Top Anti-Spam Filter Reviews

In the race to provide the best anti-spam system to fight the ever-growing threat of spam email, there are a few which stand out among the for-pay software systems. Some are software programs, while others are web-based systems that function by sending your email through their service before it gets to you. The web-based filter has the added benefit of not permitting spam to get through to your system, in the first place; on the other hand, if valid email is filtered out and isn't spam, its difficult to recover it.

Here are reviews of top-rated spam filters

Mailwasher:

The Mailwasher spam filter is a very efficient and secure spam filtering tool. It combines a number of different techniques to detect and delete spam before it gets to your inbox, as well as protecting your computer from viruses. These techniques include: using statistics, blacklisting and white-listing, databases and advanced learning filtration.
Mail Washer supports IMAP and POP accounts, as well as MSN, AOL and Hotmail. However, it does not offer IMAP or POP proxy filtering.
This spam filter takes a bit of time to "learn" what you think is spam, and in time will be highly efficient in its spam filtration.

Only My Email:

Is on an online web based filtration system, so there is no software to download or install. Because it is not downloaded to your computer itself, the spam filtering operations will never affect your computer's performance. Your email is filtered prior to coming to your computer and the spam will never be downloaded to your personal machine. You also get a daily spam report.

Only My Email is an extremely accurate anti-spam filter. It is capable of filtering up to three IMAP or POP email accounts.

Cloudmark Desktop:

This is a great, easy to use anti-spam filter. It is a plug-in for Outlook and Outlook Express. This software is highly accurate, with a great spam detection rate and relatively low false positives.

Cloudmark Desktop uses a database of spammers to identify and filter out spam. This database is updated by the community of over a million Cloudmark users. For example, when you identify a message as spam, it is automatically deleted from other Cloudmark users' inboxes as well. Phishing spam faces the same fate. This spam filter deletes spam immediately or moves it into a dedicated folder for further action from you or later deletion.
Cloudmark Desktop is a subscription service that needs to be renewed annually. There are still some areas in which improvement is needed such as in the case of false positive spam removal, but all in all, it is a great spam and phishing email solution.

CA Anti-spam

Previously known as eTrust Anti-Spam, this software is a whitelist spam filter. This means that it will only permit mail from those you have added to your whitelist and will quarantine all other emails. Once approved, messages from a previously quarantined sender will be moved to your inbox. It also updates your whitelist by scanning you outgoing email.

While CA Anti-spam works well for those who receive only mail from those they know, but may not be practical for those who receive large volumes of email from several legitimate but unknown sources.