Norton Anti-Spam 2005

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

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If you don't have an anti spam feature on your mail server, then you need to fight it on the desktop. The Norton Anti-Spam 2005 is meant for such needs only. It works with all POP3 e-mail clients, but for users of Eudora, Outlook and Outlook Express, it creates separate toolbar for classifying mail as spam or not. It also synchronizes their address books with its allowed list, which is a new feature in this version. You can also define your own e-mail IDs or domains in the allowed or blocked list. The software has five spam-fighting levels, with the higher levels providing maximum spam filtering but simultaneously also increasing the risk of identifying legitimate mail as spam. The default option is the middle level, which is sufficient for most of the needs. To identify spam messages it uses an auto-updateable list of anti-spam definitions. You can also create your own rules to block or unblock mail based on sender or receiver addresses, subject, body or complete mail. It marked a lot of legitimate mail as spam. We found the default Outlook 2003 spam filter better. Its smart filtering engine learns legitimate mail by analyzing your outgoing messages. 

Apart from anti spam, it has also got pop-up and ad-blocking features. A new feature filters e-mail messages of Yahoo accounts. It creates a separate spam folder in your Yahoo mailbox and periodically checks the mail account for spam and moves it into that folder. However, Yahoo itself provides a better spam filter for its users.

The Bottom Line: A comprehensive package though its spam filter is not very efficient.

Anoop Mangla

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