Spamfighter Pro 4

Being inundated with spam can be infuriating, but you can limit its effect using utilities such as Spamfighter.

This latest version of Spamfighter Pro has a new interface that's much easier to use. Additionally, a series of minor improvements under the bonnet make it faster and more effective at catching rogue emails.

It works as a plug-in to Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. Installation is quick and immediately followed by a three-stage setup procedure.

First, you have to customise your firewall so it will allow Outlook and Outlook Express to work with Spamfighter. If you use more than one firewall, you'll have to do this for each one.

Although it supports Pop3 email, Imap isn't catered for. Spamfighter says an update for this is planned.

The software then has to configure your whitelist (the list of email addresses you want to accept email from) by importing your contacts.

After installation and setup, you'll see a new dedicated toolbar within Outlook and things get a lot simpler.

Spamfighter automatically filters recognised spam (it claims to spot around 90 per cent) and blacklists it by inserting it into a dedicated folder.

Should any unsolicited mail manage to bypass the filter, you can manually block it by clicking the appropriate toolbar button. Any mail from that source will then be blocked in future.

Spamfighter is an easy-to-use and economically priced spam solution. The Pro edition, as reviewed here, is designed for business use and requires yearly payments of $29 (£17 approx).

An alternative version, Spamfighter Standard, is free for home users but is also limited to 100 blacklist/whitelist addresses and adds a small text advertisement to outgoing emails.

System requirements:
Outlook 2000/2002/2003/XP
Outlook Express 5 or later
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

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