Reviews: Spamfire
I hate spam. I have lived on the Internet for years without it and then in the past year it seemed to explode on my desktop. I know my problem isn’t as bad some people’s but I get on average about 30 spam messages a day, including some really nasty stuff too that would make a sailor blush. While I like the spam filter in OS X’s mail program, I really love Eudora and have used Eudora for 15 years.I tried using a filtering system called Spamnix for Eudora and also Eudora’s own junk mail filter but found them difficult to use. The biggest problem with these programs was clearly sorting good mail from spam.
For this column, I first tried a program called Spamnix.I didn’t end up writing about Spamnix because I either couldn’t get it to work or couldn’t figure it out. Either way it didn’t work for me. Then I tried Spamfire and fell in love. Yes,I truly love this program. Spamfire runs with practically any email program because it puts itself between your email program and your ISP. Instead of having your email program retrieve the email from your ISP, Spamfire instead gets your mail and then your email program gets it from Spamfire.
Doing so prevents the spam from ever reaching your inbox.For me, it has the added bonus of sorting my spam while I’m on the road. I can leave Spamfire running and when I check my email via my cell phone or a website, no spam is wasting my time because Spamfire has already removed it from my mail server.
Spamfire scores each email based on Bayesian principles and it’s own proprietary filter system, which you can choose to pay for yearly updates. I noticed practically no difference in the amount of spam sorted after I paid for the updates. I’m not sure I’ll pay for them in the future. Spamfire sorts all your email in one of three basic categories: Good email, borderline email, and Spam. Spam is then subdivided into definite and probable. This allows you to quickly check the borderline and probable categories for any good emails that slipped through. I’ll check the definite folder every so often, and the probably and borderline once a day. Spamfire can either hold, delete, or pass along to the email program. I have mine set to trash anything it marks as spam and hold anything that is borderline. I like the fact it keeps me in complete control of how to deal with the mail, because in the beginning I didn’t let it trash anything until it got more accurate in determining what I personally considered spam. Most junk filters, like the one built into OS X mail, don’t give you that level of control. It’s either junk or not junk and life, like email, isn’t that black and white all the time. As I have used the program over the past few months, it has gotten much better at identifying the difference between spam and good emails, although when I started buying and selling on ebay, it got confused and some of the good emails got mistakenly marked as spam.
Right now, I get zero good emails marked as spam and maybe a spam message slips through every other week. Spamfire also has a revengefunction (with a screw icon believe it or not). It allows you to report phishing attempts to ebay or paypal and general spam to the FTC and the ISP. It’s a nice idea,but probably doesn’t do much good. My major complaint about Spamfire is it seems to take a lot of processor cycles. In activity monitor,it’s usually sucking up the most CPU time. I also think their system of paying for filters is a bit confusing. I bought an upgrade from an old version, and the upgrade didn’t come with filters, but the full version did. In the long run, I paid more for an upgrade and filters than I
would have for a full version. Tech support has been intermittent, sometimes I got responses, sometimes I didn’t.
Overall, anyone that is having a problem with spam should strongly consider the program as a way to regain control over their inbox. Price is $39.95 LAUGmembers $24.95 by going to : http://www.matterform.com/mugoffer/
Pros: Outstanding method to keep spam from my inbox.
Cons: Confusing costs and purchase options.
4 out of 5 dogcows