Sarasota PC Monitor
Spam Sleuth 4.0
A Software Review
by George Whitesell
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Are you as tired of the ever increasing amount of SPAM as I am? I am frequently asked what can be done to eliminate it. Unfortunately, the truth is it will only get worse before it gets better. Several programs are now available to help with the problem of spam, and I recently had the opportunity to try one of them: "Spam Sleuth 4.0" from Blue Squirrel.
Spam Sleuth installs easily and can be configured to run in either a "POP3 Proxy" mode or a "Polling" mode. The POP3 Proxy mode is the recommended mode and is fully automatic after installation. Spam Sleuth is added to the Startup folder so it loads automatically when Windows starts. You have to enter your password the first time Spam Sleuth checks email after a reboot, but you can store your password so you won't have to enter it again.
I set up my computer, which is running Windows XP with Service Pack 2, using the POP3 Proxy mode. In this mode Spam Sleuth acts like a mail server, analyzing and holding email until you download it to your email client. Spam Sleuth works with Outlook Express, Eudora, Lotus Notes, Pegasus, Outlook, Netscape and others. The program is also available as a bundle with POP2Web which works with MSN, AOL or Hotmail. Spam Sleuth does not support Juno at this time.
You download and read your email as you normally do using Outlook Express or one of the other supported email clients. There is a delay in downloading email caused by the time it takes Spam Sleuth to analyze each email and classify it as either good email or spam. My Outlook Express timed out twice while waiting for Blue Squirrel to analyze a large number of messages. In each case I tried downloading the email a second time and was successful.
Email labeled as spam is held by Spam Sleuth and not downloaded to your email client. If you set up Spam Sleuth to act as a Proxy server and then close the program you will not be able to receive your email until you restart Spam Sleuth. Spam Sleuth includes a virus detector, though I would recommend continuing to use your normal anti-virus program. You can turn off Spam Sleuth's internal anti-virus detector, although I left the feature active and it never interfered with my anti-virus program. Spam Sleuth analyzes several aspects of email messages, adding or subtracting points to come up with a total "score" for each message. The default score for spam is 190 points or more, and once an individual e-mail's score reaches 1000 for any of the analyzers, Spam Sleuth stops that analyzer. Any message that scores 10,200 or more total for all analyzers is permanently trashed. You can adjust the point levels for spam for your individual preferences.
You can configure Spam Sleuth to update automatically without asking, update after asking, or update manually only. I would not recommend relying on manual updates only. It's too easy to forget to run the update process. I chose to have Spam Sleuth update automatically once a day.
I found that Spam Sleuth classified email from any member of the SPCUG Yahoo Group as spam, unless they were already in my "friends" list, so I was constantly adding SPCUG Yahoo Group members to my "Friends List" during the training period. An alternative would be to look at the SPCUG Yahoo messages in Spam Sleuth and delete the ones you are not interested in and changing any that you are interested in to "Good" email. I initially added newsletters to my "Friends" list, and found that some regular newsletters I subscribe to do not always come from the same address. I finally discovered the "Add to Mailing Lists" option. Once I added Dave Gerber to my "Friends List" and Kim Kommando's newsletter to my "Mailing Lists" I was able to receive both newsletters without any problems.
Initially Spam Sleuth requires a lot of user intervention until it learns who your friends are, the mailing lists you subscribe to and you "train" the Bayesian analyzer. I spent three weeks training Spam Sleuth and the effort has paid off, although I'm sure additional training would result in even more spam elimination from my Inbox. I recommend studying the manual as you learn to use Spam Sleuth. I found myself referring to the manual often, to learn how to configure the different analysis options. Spam Sleuth offers several ways to deal with spam including bouncing, applying a Turing test, and using Email stamps. I did not try the Turing Test or Email stamps myself, and feel that, given more time, I could fine tune Spam Sleuth much more than I have already. I did not discover the fact that Spam Sleuth will import your address book into your friend's list until I had manually been adding people for several weeks. As I said, reading the manual for this program is important.
I did find a couple of things I would like to see changed in the program. I would prefer to be able to bounce and delete email in one step, rather than requiring two separate steps. When you bounce an email, a message is sent back to the sender stating the email was undeliverable. Hopefully that results in your email address being removed from the spammers list. When I bounce an email it is because I am not interested in it, or in receiving any more email from that person. The program requires you to bounce and then delete an email in two separate steps. Also, when I clicked on an email identified as spam which was not spam I would think adding the sender to my friends list would automatically change the email from spam to good. Once again I had to perform a second operation on the same email to tell Spam Sleuth it was a "good" email. I can understand why simply changing an email from being classified as spam to good would not automatically add the sender to my friends list but I think the opposite would be a time saving feature.
Spam Sleuth does not eliminate spam, it only gives you a way of dealing with it other than constantly wading through it in your Inbox. Any email labeled as spam is not sent to your Inbox, but held in Spam Sleuth where you can easily delete it or reclassify it as good email. You must remember to regularly check Spam Sleuth by double-clicking the icon in the tray area near the clock. Spam Sleuth is not 100% correct in it's classification of email as good or spam. Some spam will slip through and some valid email messages will be labeled as spam and held up by Spam Sleuth. To have those good email messages sent to your Inbox you must right-click on them in Spam Sleuth and reclassify them as good email messages. During the training period I opened Spam Sleuth first to change any email mislabeled as good or spam, before downloading the email into Outlook Express.
Spam Sleuth can be downloaded from the Blue Squirrel web site at www.bluesquirrel.com for $29.95 or $39.95 if you need the POP2Web addition needed to use the program with Hotmail, MSN or AOL. Blue Squirrel is scheduled to be the main presenter at our October General Meeting, where you will be able to learn more about Spam Sleuth and some of the other programs they offer. :
Copyright 2004. This article is from the October 2004 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.