No Spam Problem
I don't have a spam problem.
No, seriously, I don't! Oh, sure, I get it just like you do. I've got a couple email addresses which have been kicking around the web since the mid nineties, and believe me, every spam bot in the universe has my address. But ever since my IT guy turned me on to Cloudmark, I haven't had to even think about spam.
Cloudmark installs into Outlook or Outlook Express. It functions with a community system - if people in the community say a particular address is that of a spammer, it gets flagged and then if anyone else in the community get an email from that address, its blocked. It all happens right in your email system - my spams are all dumped into my deleted folder, where I can poke my head in now and then and see if there were any false catches. You don't have to log in somewhere else to see that sort of thing. And if you're pretty sure its all spam, just flush it out of your trashcan.
When you first install Cloudmark, you'll need to spend a little bit of time training it. Its simple - spot a spam in your inbox, click Block and it goes away - and that community database gets updated. Find a good message in your deleted folder, click Unblock and it is returned to your inbox. After a few days, you'll find its more and more accurate and you'll be able to forget about spam entirely.
The Cloudmark system also relies on trust. How accurate you are in blocking spam (and knowing what is spam vs. what isn't) adds to your trust, as does how quickly after a spam arrives, you flag it as spam.
Cloudmark is very reasonably priced, only $39.95 for a year, for a single license that can be used on up to two computers. They have volume discounts, as well.
Perhaps my favorite part of Cloudmark, second only to its phenomenal accuracy, is the statistics. This is what I get when I check my stats:
- My total messages checked 114,785
- My total spam stopped 88,214
- My total phish stopped 156
- Spam I've blocked 383
- Phishing I've blocked 0
posted by Eileen @ 11:37 PM
