Let’s take Cloudmark’s latest foray into the Anti Spam market. I have been using Anti Spam for as long as I have been using email and have played with such products as SpamCatcher, SpamKiller from McAfee and Norton AntiSpam. All have advantages and some disadvantages. Although not officially supported yet (Cloudmark says sometime Q1 2007), I was able to get it to work Under Vista and Office 2007. Check out this forum for
instructions.
Price
From a cost perspective, not many products can beat Cloudmark’s $4.00USD monthly fee. You can pay by month or get a slight break and sign up for the year and receive an $8.00USD discount. I went with the yearly subscription. Be forewarned with the yearly subscription though. It is set and forget. It will renew as long as you forget to tell them to stop. If you are on the forgetful side, be sure to note when the licenses expire so as to not unintentionally renew. Did I mention that price includes 2 licenses? This way I could install the Spam filter on my and computer and my wife’s computer with a single purchase. You can even mix and match between various computers if your need exists.Ease of Use
The second factor is obviously ease of setup and use. If it costs you $100 in consulting fees every time you need to make a configuration change, the solution becomes ineffective. Cloudmark is simple to install and configure. Installation is a few clicks and it is integrated seamlessly into Outlook or Outlook Express. Once Outlook is opened a task bar is added which allows you to choose whether or not to add mail to the Block or No Block list.Wisdom of Crowds – Turn the Users into Spam Fighters
Cloudmark is community based. The more you participate the better the engine becomes. Cloudmark does not only use filtering techniques, it uses the community to help it out as well. While this technique may be a little slower, it is often much more effective as it allows users to decide what is and isn’t Spam. This technique is called
Vipul’s Razor. With a million users, the statistics are staggering...and effective. At the touch of a button you can bring up annual and daily Spam fighting stats.
Effectiveness
The last factor would be that of false positives. If you cannot rely on the product like death and taxes, then it is ineffectual. False positives are the bane to any Anti Spam product. I have run Cloudmark for 2 months at home, in my office, and on my wife’s computer (against her initial displeasure at me mucking with her machine, but now she appreciates the simplicity and effectiveness of Cloudmark) and our false positive rate is less than 1 for every 500 emails. When SPAM does come in you can send it to a specially created Spam folder or one of your choice. You can even delete it instantly if you like. I have gotten to the point that I trust the folder enough, that I rarely query its results.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a quick yet effective AntiSpam solution for your small business, or your personal desktop check out Cloudmark. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that they also make server side products, but that is for another article.
