I wouldn't post this if I hadn't tried it... and I paid for it myself, so don't anybody be thinking I'm reviewing something someone sent me!
Long ago and far away I got very tired of local ISPs and 2nd phone lines and took
the plunge and got hooked up to cable... yeah I know
the 2nd phone line concept may
be hard for everyone to understand, but that's how it was in '
the old days'. To avoid having to change email addresses all
the time, I decided to buy a domain name,
get minimal hosting, and use that for all email into
the house. That way if I changed providers, all
the email addresses wouldn't have to change.
Of course, about a dozen domains later, I have LOTS of pop email addresses and even an exchange address to my client's server... times have changed.
What also has changed is
the fact that we get SPAM... 'back in
the day' when I was a beta tester for
the first ISP in Phoenix, someone tried sending an ad
to all of us, and what he got in return for his trouble was a bunch of core dumps that locked up his email... if you don't know what a core dump is,
ask your grandfather.
But in today's world, we're all much more civilized than that, and as with many things,
the criminals seem to have much more rights than we do, so we get
inundated with email offering all sorts of wild schemes that you'd have to be brain-dead to accept, but yet... if people weren't accepting them, they'd stop
sending them.
I keep hoping that survival of
the smartest would weed out
the mental midgets that respond and then
the jumk email stop, but that hasn't happened yet anymore
than finding high-quality hearing aids at
the checkout line of Safeway because of all
the dimwits playing music too loud inside their car... but that's another
whole topic and I digress.
So what's
the solution for all
the spam?
And I mean *all*... on that
old personal email address, I am now getting over 150 spam messages a day! Yes I know that's why God invented
the delete key, but I took it
on as a challenge, and it's a matter of principle... why should I switch email addresses, or convert from
[email protected] to something else, or have all
my email filtered through some service just because some A-Hole somewhere has a site up trying to phish Ma & Pa Kettle (ask your grandfather about that too) out of their retirement money?
Well... I got an email from my cousin
the other day while I was writing yet another email rule, and there was a banner on
the bottom of his email that said he was protected by SPAMfighter.
SPAMfighter huh.... so I took a look at their site, and found yet one more of
the supposed tools to help us.
But... I read that they're a Microsoft Gold Partner... and that doesn't come lightly... so I took a gamble and here's what I found:
I installed it, and had to do a couple things:
1) SPAMfighter stuffed
the SPAMfighter folder into my client's exchange address... I deleted it, made a new SPAMfighter folder where I wanted it to go,
then in
the SPAMfighter Clients settings for Outlook, I told it to put all spam there.
2) It didn't seem to be doing anything. There's a ribbon button that you can select "Block", and I did that, wondering if I was 'training' it, but it wasn't picking up duplicates
3) I sent email to support, and wrote a post on
the forum (not to self: reply to that post). By
the time
the folks from
the home office responded, it was
the next day, and first up, SPAMfighter knocked down everything that came through when Outlook opend... two thumbs up!
I disabled my 'garbage collection' rule from Outlook, and told Outlook not to use
the junk folder thinking it was interfering.
4) Day 2 seemed to go about like Day 1... but I hung in there.
5) Day 3 is now a whole new day... I had left Outlook open and hadn't looked at
the PC since sometime late yesterday afternoon, and when I looked this morning, *every bit* of spam was in
the SPAMfighter folder!!
I'm a new paying customer
After watching SPAMfighter work this morning, I've purchased a 1-year license, and I now can sit and watch as emails come in and disappear from my inbox into
the SPAMfighter folder.
No more continual tweaking of
the rules. I've got SPAMfighter set to 'Very Hard' filtering... personally I'd rather pull
the few real emails out of
the SPAMfighter folder than pull spam out of
the real folders.
Yes this is simply another way of using
the delete key, but you know what? ... it feels good :)
Here's a screenshot of
the stats after just about 48 hours of being onboard:
Note that all
the ones blocked by me were during Day 1 and 2... I've blocked none today, and everything is blocked.
Stay in
the 'Light!
