If you ’re depend for the easiest - to - employment Mac - compatible spam utility on earth , look no farther than SpamSweep 1.5.3 . Yet its ease of use is a double - edged sword . While it ’s a snap to countersink up and learn , it render precious few options for configuring its filter .
When you first launch the program , a setup assistant allows you to choose your Es - ring mail client [ Apple ’s Mail ( ) , Qualcomm ’s Eudora ( ) , Gyaz Square ’s GyazMail ( ) , Bare Bones Software ’s Mailsmith ( ) , Microsoft Entourage ( ) , CTM Development ’s PowerMail ( ) , and Mozilla ’s Thunderbird are patronize ] and provides an area for entering your e - post report data . Once that is done , SpamSweep assay to log onto the ISP ’s POP and SMTP servers to confirm your preferences .
SpamSweep downloads the first 100 kilobyte of every e - mail message , filters it , furnish options for making correction , and , once you ’ve mark your spam , cancel it from the server . You download the upright Es - mail that remains on the server when you plug in with your e - mail client ( SpamSweep includes a command for launch the default e - mail client ) . It currently supports POP account only .
Like other junk e-mail utilities , Spamsweep installs a black book consisting of multiple IP and field name , build a whitelist of approved senders , and offers Bayesian filtering . The broadcast render no entree to its blacklist , spam corpus ( the collection of words the Bayesian filter uses to identify spam ) , or filter . Like other utilities that admit Bayesian filters , it learns as it goes . Other than correcting it when it ’s wrong by identifying the validity of e - mail that it ’s filter out , you have no choice for adjusting its behavior .
The program go well , and after a few twenty-four hours of training , it did a fair job separating the good from the bad vitamin E - mail . But I ’m a little unquiet about allowing an software other than my e - post node to plow my subject matter , as some may be circumstantially deleted . For this reason , I favor app like C - Command ’s SpamSieve ( ) and Intego ’s Personal Antispam X4 ( ) , which mold within my e - chain armor node .
Macworld’s buying advice
SpamSweep 1.5.3 is a reasonable option if you prefer an effective filter that does n’t require much in the room of setup or maintenance . It ’s not a good choice , however , if you want to get into the gut of your spam utility to configure its lists and filter .
[ Christopher Breen is a senior editor atMacworld . ]
