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Webroot Spam Shredder. Any Good?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by daniel, Jan 19, 2005.

  1. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    I've been using Webroot's Spy Sweeper since I read a very positive review of it at PC Magazine Online. The same company offers an anti-spam program, "Spam Shredder." The claim is that in addition to the usual whitelist and blacklist, it employs a downloadable and regularly-updated list of spammers, and supposedly can learn what you consider spam. Then you have the choice of whether to have it automatically delete tagged messages, or hold them in quarantine for you to review by hand.

    So, has anybody used this program? Does it live up to its claims? Is it safe to install?

    I've been getting more and more spam, as I suppose we all have. Up until now I've been dealing with it manually, probably not more than 10 or 20 a day, always easily identifiable from their subject lines. But lately the numbers have been growing, and I'm wondering if it's time to get an anti-spam program.

    Advice?
     
    #1 daniel, Jan 19, 2005
  2. Sufferin' Prius Envy

    Sufferin' Prius Envy Platinum Member

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    #2 Sufferin' Prius Envy, Jan 20, 2005
  3. DaveG

    DaveG Member

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    For blocking email spam, I have to wholeheartedly, 100% recommend POPFile:

    http://popfile.sourceforge.net/

    It's a open-source project, 100% free, and it gets EVERYTHING. I've been running it for 2 years now, and the accuracy at killing spam is currently at 99.21%. Which means that out of 11,281 emails, it's missed 88 (and most of those were when it was being "trained"). It's also compatible with every email program that picks up POP email.

    I kid you not - spam has totally ceased to be a problem for me. I don't even see it anymore.

    Dave
     
    #3 DaveG, Jan 20, 2005
  4. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    #4 daniel, Jan 20, 2005
  5. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    No spam killer is going to be 100% perfect. If it is aggressive enough to stop all spam it's going to have some false positives. But thanks for the link. I'll take a look.
     
    #5 daniel, Jan 20, 2005
  6. DaveG

    DaveG Member

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    Well no, I recommend it 100%, but it's only 99.21% accurate for me... But that's close enough to 100% to be nearly perfect :)

    Dave
     
    #6 DaveG, Jan 20, 2005
  7. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Reading what they say, it takes a thousand emails for the open-source one to properly "learn" what you consider spam. Webroot's Spam Shredder (according to their ad) actually downloads a continually-updated list of spam, in addition to the usual hieuristics for "sniffing" out spam. That sounds like an extra layer of accuracy.

    But it sounds like nobody here actually has any experience with it.
     
    #7 daniel, Jan 21, 2005
  8. DaveG

    DaveG Member

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    I don't think you got the correct information there - POPfile was trained properly for me within about a week, and I usually only get 4-6 emails a day - it probably less than 25 classification adjustments total to get the accuracy up over 95%. I havn't tweaked the config in months.

    Dave
     
    #8 DaveG, Jan 22, 2005
  9. Sufferin' Prius Envy

    Sufferin' Prius Envy Platinum Member

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    Webroot's Spy Sweeper
    POPfile

    Probably a good idea if you are using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express . . . For the same reasons seriously strong Antivirus, Firewalls, and other security measures are needed . . . Outlook and Outlook Express are also security breaches just waiting to happen.

    Rather than adding another layer of bloatware, why not address the problem by getting rid of the problem itself.

    Just like Mozilla Firefox is superior to IE for security and usability, Mozilla Thunderbird (stand alone email program) is also superior for the same reasons . . . and it’s free and open source.

    Thunderbird has built in:
    Junk Mail Tools - automatically detect and handle spam the way you want. If you read message marked as spam, all harmful codes are removed from the message - no worm or virus potential.
    Enterprise and government grade security features.
    IMAP/POP support, a built-in RSS reader, support for HTML mail, powerful quick search, saved search folders, advanced message filtering, message grouping, labels, return receipts, smart address book LDAP address completion, import tools, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts.
    Ability to customize with Extensions . . . like online dictionary search, OpenPGP message encryption and authentication, etc.

    C-Net. 92% thumbs-up user opinion.
    http://www.download.com/Mozilla-Thunderbir...tml?tag=lst-0-1

    Mozilla Thunderbird
    http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

    Just in case, I set up Thunderbird to put suspected spam into separate folder, so I can glance at them with impunity.
     
    #9 Sufferin' Prius Envy, Jan 24, 2005
  10. snarfo

    snarfo New Member

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    Outlook 2003 has a very effective and configurable spam filter.
     
    #10 snarfo, Jan 24, 2005
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