A Review of iHateSpam
Aug 06 '02 (Updated May 05 '03)
The Bottom Line iHateSpam is a very transparent and easy to use - yet powerful - spam filter that keeps the unwanted e-mail out of your hair.
Price: $19.95
Requirements: Outlook / Outlook Express on Windows
"Free" - Buy from Amazon.com and get a full rebate until June 14th.
I didn't find SunBelt Software's (www.sunbelt-software.com) iHateSpam in the software section, so I will write my review here.
iHateSpam is an aptly-named filter program that intercepts unsolicited ads as your e-mail client downloads them, and redirects them to a set of "Quarantine" folders under your inbox. You never need to know that you received them. There are a few differences to this filter that sets it apart from other products.
It installs as a client plug-in that integrates with your e-mail client (currently Outlook and Outlook Express, only). This becomes a part of your e-mail program, and works within it. There is no separate utility or tricky proxy settings to deal with. This allows iHateSpam to work closely with the client, yet restricts it to only those clients that it supports. I use Outlook 2000, so this review will reflect its use with that client.
Installing the utility is straightforward. Setup is automatic and will guide you through the initial options. Once installed, it is simple enough that you can just forget about it, yet offers enough options that you can tweak it to your heart's delight. Outlook will display a new toolbar and a menu to give you access to the filter's functions. [This toolbar doesn't respond well to Outlook's "Customize" feature -- this should be fixed in a later release.]
One step offered during setup that is highly recommended is to add your entire address book to the program's whitelist. Any e-mail received from anybody on this list will be accepted automatically. This helps prevent false positives from intercepting legitimate messages.
This filter is compatible with Exchange, and will whitelist all of your Exchange contacts if you want. Note that Exchange does not allow e-mail to be sent through separate e-mail servers, so the "Bounce" function (more detail below) may not work.
You may have some Rules (filters) set up to move messages to different folders. iHateSpam operates after the Rules have executed. This prevents it from intercepting any messages for which you have Rules set up. If you do want iHateSpam to also scan one or more of these folders automatically, you can set this up through a menu command.
Notification of spam intercepted can be set to your preference. You can have it display a special report window that gives a summary of messages quarantined, only show a pop-up on the screen when something happens, or just do nothing at all. Note that if you disable all notification, you will not know when messages are intercepted. Maybe that's what you want, but be aware that you won't know about any false positives, or messages that should not have been quarantined. iHateSpam marks all quarantined messages as read, so you will not know which messages just came in.
Update: The latest version now gives you much more control over how it treats your messages. For example, I now have the software set to my personal preferences to leave all spam marked unread, and to give me no notifications at all. Now I can see what new spam has been quarantined simply by looking at the new message counts in Outlook.
There are four (or one, your choice) Quarantine folders that the filter will set up under your inbox. Adult receives the nastiest of the offensive e-mail. Hazardous contains any virus-laden e-mails. If you have a good antivirus utility installed, this folder will remain empty. Junk holds one-shot unsolicited advertisements (or everything, if you opted for just one folder), and Subscription keeps messages that looks like they came through a mailing list. The qualification mechanism isn't perfect, and there is no way to tell the filter when it put a message in the wrong quarantine folder. You can manually move a message between these folders if you want to, however.
This filter uses a shared learning system that gives it the collective experience of its whole user base. When you tell it that a piece of e-mail is spam (or is not), it sends that information to a central server, which shares it with everybody else. Don't worry, this process is completely anonymous -- only the spam is sent, not any of your personal information. If you really don't like this, you can turn it off. Unlike CloudMark's SpamNet, this learning system uses the standard HTTP port 80 for communication, which is compatible with any firewall.
Like any filter, it will make mistakes. Sometimes is marks a message as spam that really isn't, or misses a message that is. You can select the message and hit a button on the toolbar to correct the mistake. The utility will send the new information to the central server. It learns from its mistakes.
Be careful when hitting one of these buttons. If you tell it that a real unsolicited ad is not spam, or that an opt-in solicited message is spam, this can reduce the quality of the central database, and cause it to make more mistakes for everybody who uses it. More Info: I was just informed that this database is maintained by a human, not a computer. This allows mistakes to be discarded and kept out of the system, making it very accurate. However, the more false classifications that are sent in, the more work that this person has to do.
Updated (again): Other features include a mail bouncer and an abuse reporter. Once configured, you can hit a "Bounce" button to send a rejection notice back to the spammer. Some spam software will see this notice and think that your address is invalid, deleting it from its database. You can also hit the "Report" button to report an offender to their ISP.
At this time, the bounce and report features don't work well against spam that has forged headers. This can cause reports and bounces to be sent to the wrong address. If you use these features, make sure to double-check where the messages are being sent.
Another nice addition is a language block which will automatically intercept messages with different language sets. You can block all messages from Korea, for example, or simply block everything that is not in your language, such as English.
Performance and stability is excellent. Since it is integrated into your client, there are no cross-application communication bottlenecks. The filter knows immediately when new e-mail arrives, and can take action quickly. It is incredibly stable for a new product. This filter has not crashed once or given me any errors or problems since I installed it a month ago, and I leave Outlook running 24/7 on my system at work.
Accuracy is also very good. After an initial learning period, iHateSpam intercepted almost all spam on my system, and made very few mistakes. No filter is perfect, and there will always be a few spams that get through it, or some non-spam that will get intercepted. Hitting the "Is Spam" button is an easy, one-step process that gets the offending message out of your face and into the filter's learning system. If a message keeps getting through, you can hit the "Add to Enemies" button to add the sender to the program's block list.
The few false positives that it had were easy enough to fix. The "Is Not Spam" button will pop the message out of the Quarantine folder and back into your inbox, and will send the mistake to the learning system. There is an "Add to Friends" button that will add the message's sender to the filter's whitelist, so messages from that sender will never be intercepted again.
Update: You now have the option of automatically adding senders of spam to your "Enemies" list whenever you hit the "Is Spam" button. Likewise, you can have it add senders of legitimate e-mail to your "Friends" list when you hit the "Is Not Spam" button. This gives you a nice, one-step operation to help avoid the same misclassification in the future. You can also make iHateSpam less chatty by turning off the notifications that pop up when you hit these buttons.
The creators of iHateSpam were very thorough when designing this filter. It has the simplicity for anyone to use, yet power-user features that allow you to get into most of the nitty-gritty details. This is a solid product that gets my recommendation, despite the few minor rough edges found in any brand-new product. The new version shows that they listen to their customers' feedback and are working very hard to make their product shine.
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Epinions.com ID:
gsearle
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Member: Greg Searle
Location: Nashua, NH
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 11 members
About Me:
Computer graphics designer and software developer with interests in technology, home improvement, and family life.
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