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Best spam filtering

J

jasimon9

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 11, 2009
184
3
As a Mac newbie, I have noticed an increase in the amount of spam that I get compared to my Windows environment, in which I had used several purchased anti-spam solutions, the latest being a part of the ZoneAlarm Security Suite (which uses an embedded version of MailFrontier, which has excellent performance).

The documentation says that Mail's built-in spam filtering "will take a while to learn" from my actions. However, I have been using it for about three weeks now and a lot of spam still gets through.

I am wondering if it just needs more time, or a more powerful solution is needed. If so, what are the most highly regarded applications? I have found SpamSieve most prominent in some preliminary searching.
 
jasimon9 said:
As a Mac newbie, I have noticed an increase in the amount of spam that I get compared to my Windows environment, ...
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I don't know about the commercial filters for consumers, but I do know about commercial filters for the enterprise. They suck! There, a false positive is a lost message. You will likely never know what you didn't get. This can't happen with Mail's Junk Mail filter.

Mail's Junk Mail filter out-of-the-box should be in training mode. You should keep it in training mode for about two weeks. While in training mode, messages flagged as Junk Mail are color-coded [brown by default] and left in your Inbox. Understand that training is not a passive exercise. Messages that are correctly flagged as Junk Mail may be deleted immediately. Junk Mail missed by the filter should be flagged manually and then deleted. False positives may be unflagged. These manual actions train the Junk Mail filter.

Over time, the filter should miss fewer junk messages. The filter should also flag fewer false positives. When you are satisfied with the accuracy of the filter, then you may take your Junk Mail filter out of training mode. This will create a Junk Mail folder in your Mail sidebar. All messages flagged as Junk Mail should automatically be sent to this folder. You may examine each junk message later to ensure that it did not inadvertently flag false positives.
 
MisterMe said:
I don't know about the commercial filters for consumers, but I do know about commercial filters for the enterprise. They suck! There, a false positive is a lost message. You will likely never know what you didn't get. This can't happen with Mail's Junk Mail filter.

Mail's Junk Mail filter out-of-the-box should be in training mode. You should keep it in training mode for about two weeks. While in training mode, messages flagged as Junk Mail are color-coded [brown by default] and left in your Inbox. Understand that training is not a passive exercise. Messages that are correctly flagged as Junk Mail may be deleted immediately. Junk Mail missed by the filter should be flagged manually and then deleted. False positives may be unflagged. These manual actions train the Junk Mail filter.

Over time, the filter should miss fewer junk messages. The filter should also flag fewer false positives. When you are satisfied with the accuracy of the filter, then you may take your Junk Mail filter out of training mode. This will create a Junk Mail folder in your Mail sidebar. All messages flagged as Junk Mail should automatically be sent to this folder. You may examine each junk message later to ensure that it did not inadvertently flag false positives.
Click to expand...

I have been running in training mode now for a couple of weeks. There is a very persistent "brand" of spam which the built-in spam filter does not seem to be able to handle.

On Windows I used a combination of the built-in spam filter in Outlook, plus MailFrontier (built-in to Zone Alarm Internet Security). The result was near perfect performance, with both very few false positives and very few false negatives. I guess I am spoiled.

I am still looking for something better than the built-in capability. I get a lot more spam than I ever did in Windows Outlook plus Zone Alarm Security Suite (MailFrontier).
 
Yes, I'm looking for a similar solutions; I used to use Mailwasher with the PC. I'm now relying on just the Thunderbird junk learning (to be fair to Firefox, on the PC, it never had much chance to learn things, as I used Mailwasher to pre-filter it all ... so only a few things snuck in)

Is there a Mac program for those of us who want more than the learning built into Mail/Thunderbird.
 
SpamSieve is excellent, I've been using it 2 years. Best money I ever spent.

Check out the reviews, you can't go wrong.
 
Yeah I also use SpamSieve.

At one time I was getting >1000 spam a week but maybe 1 or 2 get through.
 
Sesshi said:
I use Messagelabs which is platform independent.

http://www.messagelabs.co.uk/

How applicable that is will depend on your mail environment.
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I am familiar with MessageLabs from years ago, when I was quite impressed with their enterprise offering. This was probably over 10 years ago, so I am not up-to-date.

Maybe worth a look. Thanks!

jasimon9 said:
I am familiar with MessageLabs from years ago, when I was quite impressed with their enterprise offering. This was probably over 10 years ago, so I am not up-to-date.

Maybe worth a look. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Just went to the MessageLabs website and noticed "now a part of Symantec."

That is the KISS OF DEATH as far as I am concerned. I have used so many brilliant products over the years that have been purchased by Symantec and destroyed by them, I will look no further in that direction.

Anybody asking for "details" is at their own risk of "getting me started."
 
I have that feeling too. Currently not suffering the 'Symantec Effect' however.

I hardly ever get spam on my personal accounts, but I cover them using Messagelabs in any case. On the solely-work accounts, the service is much more extensively tested and does very well.
 
I've had a look at SpamSieve - and it looks good ... but am I right in thinking that it downloads the messages & then checks them?

One of the things that I liked about Mailwasher was that it filters them on the server, so I only have to download those I want.
 
Emmadw said:
I've had a look at SpamSieve - and it looks good ... but am I right in thinking that it downloads the messages & then checks them?

One of the things that I liked about Mailwasher was that it filters them on the server, so I only have to download those I want.
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I am checking out Spam Sieve. I agree, it looks excellent!
 
I approached the problem from the idea that I did not want to download all that stuff in the first place. You can get server side software, but I went with setting up my email with everyone.net. They have a configurable spam filter + you can set up rules to control what other stuff gets through. I think it is around $35 a year. I was disgusted with my email service my internet provider supplied (Gmail) so I went with these folks. Now, if I change my ISP, my email address stays the same. Been well worth it for me
 
Locoweed said:
I approached the problem from the idea that I did not want to download all that stuff in the first place. You can get server side software, but I went with setting up my email with everyone.net. They have a configurable spam filter + you can set up rules to control what other stuff gets through. I think it is around $35 a year. I was disgusted with my email service my internet provider supplied (Gmail) so I went with these folks. Now, if I change my ISP, my email address stays the same. Been well worth it for me
Click to expand...

We have our own company mail server, with some spam filtering at that level. But I need some client side as well.
 
Gaelic2 said:
I have been using SPAM SIEVE for the past two years and have been very happy with it. It stops just about all the spam I get and they have been great on updates.
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Agreed, it seems to "fit the bill" and I will probably pay for it shortly.
 
I know this isn't exactly what you wanted, but I find gmail to have a good spam filter. If you could route your current email address through a gmail account and then use Mail to download from gmail, that could work.
 
mobilehaathi said:
I know this isn't exactly what you wanted, but I find gmail to have a good spam filter. If you could route your current email address through a gmail account and then use Mail to download from gmail, that could work.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree. This is not what I want. Thanks for the input.
 
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