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The Bottom Line
Herbivore has a simple concept that could work to eliminate unwanted bulk email, but both the core idea and several details still need some work.
Herbivore is no longer available.
Herbivore is no longer available.
Pros
- Herbivore is simple and easy to use
- Supports POP, IMAP and Hotmail accounts
- Detected spam can be browsed and restored easily
Cons
- Herbivore produces one or the other false positive
- Can't keep mail on the server
Description
- Herbivore is a spam filtering tool for multiple POP, IMAP and Hotmail accounts.
- Distills each incoming message to a core and computes a signature of that core.
- Herbivore servers collect the number of occurrences of each signature.
- If a signature appears several times, it is considered spam and put into quarantine.
- Quarantined mail can be read and approved inside Herbivore.
- Includes a friends list and automatically suggests frequently approved senders for that list.
- Herbivore supports Java 1.3 or later on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and others.
Guide Review - Herbivore - Spam Filter
Herbivore takes the definition of spam being unwanted bulk email seriously. It looks for spam by extracting what it calls a "core" message (without the small modifications spammers make in each email to circumvent filters) from incoming mail. Then Herbivore sends a checksum of this core to a central server where the occurrences of each checksum are recorded.
If a core appears several times, it can be considered bulk, and spam. Without a lot of refinement, this system seems prone to errors, and indeed Herbivore lets through some spam and, worse, produces quite a number of false positives. Fortunately, these are easy to correct, and Herbivore suggests adding known senders to a friends list.
Herbivore supports POP, IMAP and Hotmail accounts.
