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CA Anti-Spam 4 - Spam Filter

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CA Anti-Spam

CA Anti-Spam

Heinz Tschabitscher

The Bottom Line

CA Anti-Spam allows only mail from approved senders to your Inbox, checks sender credentials to warn about phishing attempts and lets you search your emails quickly, too. CA Anti-Spam suffers from the problems of challenge/response filters mildly, and you may still have to go through the spam you get every now and then.

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

Most anti-spam tools try to identify spam by looking at various characteristics. CA Anti-Spam takes a thoroughly different and differently thorough approach. All mail is spam and quarantined from your Inbox — unless it comes from an approved sender.

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.

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