SpamAssassin Pro 2003 By Larry J. Seltzer February 25, 2003

• Product: SpamAssassin Pro 2003
• Direct Price: $29.95 direct
• Company Info: Deersoft Inc., www.deersoft.com

Editor Rating:

Deersoft's SpamAssassin Pro uses a collection of more than 400 rules, each carefully weighted to generate an overall score above which a message is considered spam. The program, which is presented as a toolbar in Outlook, did well on our tests, filtering out 88.9 percent of spam while keeping its false positive rate to an acceptable 4.3 percent.

SpamAssassin Pro is richer than the other Outlook add-ins reviewed here, such as Matador, SpamCatcher, and SpamNet. This is especially apparent in the tricky case of mailing lists, which can confuse antispam applications. Messages from mailing lists have many of the same characteristics as spam, including no specified sender, a single recipient in the To: field, and any number of recipients in the BCC: field. While most of the products reviewed here provide some means to block or allow such messages, SpamAssassin makes it convenient with Allow Recipient and Block Recipient buttons on the toolbar (most applications let you block or allow based only on the sender's ID).

There is also a Scan Folder button on the toolbar, which is of less obvious usefulness, at least after initial setup. You might use this feature immediately after installation to scan old folders, a capability lacking in most other programs. Once you start running the utility, all incoming mail is scanned on input, and the button becomes superfluous. By default, SpamAssassin moves mail to a Junk Mail folder, but you also have the option, to add a spam label to the subject line and use Outlook's rules to decide the messages' ultimate destination.

One of our favorite features in SpamAssassin Pro is the Language Filter tab in the Settings dialog. By selecting one or more languages, you instruct the program to analyze the content of the message, determine its language, and let it pass only if it's checked as permissible.

At press time, Network Associates, which makes SpamKiller, announced that it had acquired Deersoft.