MailFrontier Desktop 4.8.1 - Spam Filter

MailFrontier Desktop combines a number of anti-spam tactics to form a strong spam filtering package, but the individual modules are not perfect yet.

Scoring content filters and a community approach, where a message is filtered when other users mark it spam, are both effective anti-spam techniques. Why not combine them, add challenges to which unknown senders must reply for a superior spam filtering product and throw in some adaptive content analysis based on the user's received messages and decisions, too?

That's what MailFrontier apparently thought, and the result is MailFrontier Desktop. MailFrontier Desktop is an easy to use add-on for Outlook and Outlook Express implementing all these anti-spam approaches. The techniques already work well together, but each could need some refinement individually.

The community filter in particular does not match the accuracy of similar systems, and overall spam detection is not stellar either. The challenge system generates unnecessary mail and can be a nuisance to new contacts. If you turn off these challenges and don't use the white list of known senders extensively you may run into some false positives.

MailFrontier Desktop makes it a point to protect you not only from spam but also from fraudulent mail. Messages that raise a fraud alert with Matador are placed in a special folder and may even be announced via a pop-up. This probably grants too much honor to this type of junk.