We don't have to tell you that unsolicited commercial email, or spam, is completely out of control. Most of us receive hundreds of messages a day pimping porn, Nigerian largesse, get-rich-quick schemes, and the enlargement of body parts — it's killing productivity all over the country. Nucleus Research reported in June that spam cost U.S. enterprises an average of $1,934 per employee in lost productivity over the past 10 months, versus $874 per employee for the same period in 2003.
Looking for a solution? Here are some of the hottest spam filters currently available, each of which brings to the table a different collection of tools for attacking and eliminating unwanted email.
First up is Qurb, priced at $29.95 for a single license. Qurb runs primarily on what is known as the "white list" model, which means it accepts only the messages from senders that you have already approved and ditches the rest.
Incoming messages go into quarantine for your review. Everything you choose to accept is re-routed to your inbox, and the sender goes onto your list of approved senders — your white list. The rest is assumed to be spam. Should a spam message land in your inbox, you can simply click Block to send it away.
The white list concept can be an effective countermeasure, but it depends on the user's willingness to do the legwork. The means you'll need to take a close look at all incoming messages, at least until you have built up a fairly comprehensive white list, in order for Qurb to completely effective. On the other hand, Qurb does give users a slight head start, scanning your contacts, inbox, and existing mail folders to build an initial list of approved senders.
As is the case with Cloudmark SpamNet, Qurb only works with Outlook or Outlook Express, so unless you're currently using one of these two mail clients, you may want to look at a spam client like SpamKiller, Mailshell, or even Spam Interceptor instead. The client also lacks support for IMAP mailboxes as well as Microsoft Hotmail mailboxes. Qurb does, however, integrate well with both Outlook and Outlook Express, delivering efficient and easy to use spam-capabilities for the Microsoft mail clients.
