The Bottom Line
Pros
- CA Anti-Spam integrates nicely with your normal workflow and is easy to use
- Using a whitelist, CA Anti-Spam bans spam effectively and alerts you about phishing
- CA Anti-Spam lets you search emails and other Outlook or Outlook Express data fast
Cons
- CA Anti-Spam is only available for Outlook and Outlook Express
- Spammers using an approved address can get through CA Anti-Spam's filtering
- CA Anti-Spam only works with POP and Exchange accounts, IMAP and Hotmail are not supported
Description
- CA Anti-Spam is an anti-spam plug-in for Outlook and Outlook Express.
- All mail not from an approved sender is kept in a quarantine folder by CA Anti-Spam.
- Once a sender is approved, its messages are moved to the Inbox.
- CA Anti-Spam can build a list of approved senders from the address book and any folder's emails.
- CA Anti-Spam keeps the approved list up to date by scanning outgoing email for recipients.
- Email addresses can be approved or removed from the whitelist manually, and from existing messages.
- Optionally, CA Anti-Spam can send a challenging message to unknown senders.
- Quarantined messages can be deleted automatically after a specified time in the quarantine folder.
- A real-time index of messages, addresses and other data lets you search fast and precisely.
- CA Anti-Spam supports Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Outlook 2000/2/3 or Outlook Express 5/6.
Guide Review - CA Anti-Spam 4 - Spam Filter
The most comfortable way to approve senders is having CA Anti-Spam scan your email folders, and especially outgoing emails for people you know. Adding senders manually or from the CA Anti-Spam quarantine is just as easy.
Optionally, CA Anti-Spam can send a challenging message to new senders. Replying to the challenge will approve them. This can be a bit annoying, though CA Anti-Spam is pretty smart about mailing lists and makes sure you get all list traffic if you approve one message. Spammers using commonly approved addresses (of popular newsletters, for example) can get through CA Anti-Spam's filtering, but CA Anti-Spam also supports sender authentication protocols and will warn you if somebody pretends to be somebody else. This also helps with phishing attempts if the spoofed sender has implemented one of the authentication schemes.
In my tests, CA Anti-Spam did not use DomainKeys authentication, though. CA Anti-Spam also helps you with all the good mail you do want to get. A real-time index of all your messages (and other data such as contacts or to-do items) lets you search fast, easily and with precision right from CA Anti-Spam's toolbar.
