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Spam Inspector 4.0 - Spam Filter

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By Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com

Spam Inspector - Spam Filter

Spam Inspector - Spam Filter

Heinz Tschabitscher

The Bottom Line

Spam Inspector is a great anti-spam tool that uses both adaptive (Bayesian) and collaborative filtering to filter junk while — after some training and configuration tweaks — leaving good mail alone. While its Hotmail integration is wonderful, it's a pity Spam Inspector can't be used in all email programs and doesn't support all account types (IMAP) everywhere. Spam Inspector is no longer available.
Pros
  • Spam Inspector is easy and convenient to use
  • Combines adaptive and collaborative learning for a good spam detection rate
  • Integrates well with a number of email clients and supports Hotmail in Internet Explorer
Cons
  • Spam Inspector is a little overzealous initially, with default settings
  • Training Spam Inspector takes longer than teaching other Bayesian filters
  • Spam Inspector doesn't work with all email clients

Description

  • Spam Inspector filters and quarantines spam.
  • Uses adaptive Bayesian filtering that learns with your mail and a global network of spam reports.
  • Additionally, Spam Inspector uses white and black lists of senders as well as language filters.
  • You can easily report junk mail to relevant ISPs with Spam Inspector (and, optionally, SpamCop).
  • Spam Inspector protects your privacy by removing tracking images and lets you hide offensive pics.
  • When you block a legitimate newsletter sender, Spam Inspector suggest unsubscribing.
  • Spam Inspector integrates with Outlook Express, Outlook, IncrediMail, Eudora, and Hotmail (in IE).
  • Spam Inspector supports Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/3/XP.

Guide Review - Spam Inspector 4.0 - Spam Filter

Instead of going through all the email you get manually to sort out the legions of junk, wouldn't you rather have a smart software tool inspect it for you?

A smart tool like Spam Inspector, which combines a number of spam filtering techniques to spot and quarantine unwanted emails. Best of all are a Bayesian detection engine that learns as you correct Spam Inspector's mistakes and a collaborative network where your decisions help prevent others seeing the same spam that made it through to your Inbox.

While it is easy to mark mail as spam or recover it from the quarantine using toolbar buttons in all the supported email clients, the various filtering engines seem to work against each other at times.

Especially when you've just begun using Spam Inspector, chances are it will catch a lot of good mail. And if you don't make use of the "Friends" list, it will continue to do so for some time. It is also not possible to see which filter or strategy got it wrong and selectively tweak or disable it in Spam Inspector.

If it could be done, it would probably be easy as Spam Inspector integrates well with the supported email clients and even filters your MSN Hotmail accounts if you use Internet Explorer. Users of other email programs are out of luck, however (even though Spam Inspector works as a POP proxy).

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