TECHNOLOGY
TIPS
Cheap and Effective Spam Protection
I recently installed a free spam filter
called SpamBayes that works with MS Outlook (and many
other e-mail clients as well, according to the SpamBayes
site). It is being developed as an open source
project, and is free to download and use.
SpamBayes starts with a set of rules for
identifying spam, and then modifies them based on training
it receives from the user. It will start working
immediately if it is given it a folder of spam and another
folder of good e-mail.
It doesn't use blacklists (lists of bad
e-mail senders) or whitelists (lists of good e-mail
senders). Instead, it uses statistical analysis to
identify the e-mail message as spam, good e-mail, or
suspect e-mail. The good e-mail is then delivered to
the appropriate Outlook folders as usual. The spam
is delivered to a Junk E-mail folder and the suspects to a
Junk Suspects folder.
The user then further train SpamBayes:
-
for spam received as a good message or
suspect message, clicking on "Delete as Spam" tells
SpamBayes to treat it as spam next time.
-
for good messages delivered to the
Suspect folder, clicking on "Recover from Spam"
ensures that future similar messages are treated as good
e-mail.
It has produced very few false-positives
and catches almost all spam. I don't think I have had a
single message go into the Junk E-mail (i.e. spam) folder
that was not spam....and I receive hundreds of good
messages and hundreds of spam messages.
SpamBayes installs easily into Outlook,
and is great for the non-techie. I have no
experience with how it works for other e-mail clients, but
I expect it would work just as well. It can be
downloaded from
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
 Wayne Amundson is president of Association Xpertise
Inc., a consulting firm serving associations and
non-profits. He is also a writer and speaker on
association and non-profit management and governance,
and is editor of The Canadian Association e-zine and
co-author of the new “Primer for Directors of
Not-for-Profit Corporations” published by the Industry
Canada and three non-profit umbrella groups in Canada.
Phone: 403-374-1822 E-mail: admin@axi.ca
Website: www.axi.ca
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