Spam Filters for Your Mac: Six Choices

April 3, 2007
By

Joe Kissell

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Price: $25

Works with: Apple Mail, Eudora, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Entourage, PowerMail, Thunderbird.

Pros: Bayesian filter; whitelist; domain and relay blacklists.

Cons: No IMAP support; limited configuration options; awkward procedure for handling false positives; sketchy documentation.

SpamSweep is essentially a minimalist POP client that also has some built-in spam filtering; you can, if you wish, read all your mail without leaving the program. If you want to file it or reply to a message, though, you’ll have to ask SpamSweep to redirect it back to your POP account and then fetch it with your regular client, a somewhat cumbersome procedure. (SpamSweep can launch your client automatically when good mail is detected, but that’s the extent of its integration.)

It includes only the skimpiest documentation (a brief Read Me file) and no control over how it determines which messages are spam (other than training it with good and bad messages).

SIX CHOICES: