iHateSpam

Rating:
Summary: Sunbelt Software are themselves spammers
Review: How ironic that Sunbelt Software (the makers of this software), are themselves spammers. They own and operate Winxpnews, a newsletter that I never subscribed to and can't seem to get unsubscribed from. Their software may be good but I'd rather drive nails through my kneecaps then contribute financially to spammers. You shouldn't either.

Rating:
Summary: more truth in the advertising, please!
Review: This may be a wonderful product but I will never know because I bought it to filter my AOL account. And only after receiving the product did I see where it says in VERY small print in the lower, last paragraph that "AOL is not supported." It would have been nice to have that information somewhere visible in the advertising.

Rating:
Summary: Does not work at all
Review: It failed to load the spam definition files when I ran it for the first time and haven't worked even once so far. Customer service is also not very helpful. They just told me to go through the usual list of things like reinstalling and such and finally told me the "issue" will be resolved in the next revision in five to six weeks.
Stay away from the product.

Rating:
Summary: Bummer
Review: I was very disappointed to learn after receiving my merchandise that is is not compatible with AOL.

Rating:
Summary: This really works!
Review: I tried a couple of other anti-spam programs and both were so time-consuming to set up or use that I gave up. Mailwasher was one. The gyrations I had to go through to set it up, then what I had to do to use it took more time than just deleting the spam would have taken. You have to open Mailwasher first, scan the messages, check a box for each message to be deleted or bounced, THEN your mail is downloaded to your mail server. THEN, you open your email program. I contacted their support when I couldn't access a button but was told that problem couldn't be happening. I figured I was just going to have to live with spam if I wanted to have email. Then, I found iHateSpam. I couldn't believe how easy it was to set up and how efficiently it got rid of spam. I use it on both Outlook and Outlook Express and, though it works a bit differently on each, it still keeps the spammers at bay. Finally, going through my email is not such a chore.
There are just a couple of very small tweaks you need to do when your software is first installed. It already comes0 with a large set of parameters (filters) that ascertain what is spam and what is not. If a piece of spam does get through, with the press of a button you can bounce, report, or delete the message. You can then block either that particular sender or any email that originates from that domain.
When I open Outlook, first Outlook downloads new messages. I can see all the email subject lines promising to help me lose weight, increase the size of my "male organ" (and I'm a female!) or make me rich. But, I don't have to do anything because then iHateSpam takes over. In just a very few seconds it wipes these emails away so all that is left are the emails I want to have. This saves ME the time it used to take finding and deleting all the spam messages. If I want to check the messages iHateSpam got rid of, I just go into the "Quarantined" file to check to make sure no friendly email has been put there. (Plus, it is a PLEASURE to see how many emails were quarantined that day without me having to do anything.)
I heartily recommend this software to anyone who uses either Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. The only drawback is that iHateSpam is not made for other email programs.

Rating:
Summary: Handy little tool to sanitize your email.
Review: I hate spam.

This is why I bought this software. My inbox had become a veritable catch-all for every piece of worthless advertising (a lot from reputable company's you would think should know better), filth, and other mindless drivel. The time to take action against these evil entities was long past due.

There are several things I like about this program.

(1)It was very easy to install; it has not messed up my system or email one bit.

(2)You are able to "bounce back" the [junk] you get to the sender along with a message that informs them "addressee unknown."

(3)You can report the senders to Spam.org, the FTC, the SEC, and the sender's ISP, to name a few. The program automatically reports to SpamAbuse.org.

Is this a panacea? Not by any means. Unscrupulous merchants will still find ways to circumvent these obstacles, but it is hoped that by being able to report a knucklehead to their ISP it may cause them to stop. Short of frequently changing your email address, I know of no other "fool proof method." I am not wanting to do this on principal; why do I have to change my email address just because some [person] can't get the hint?

Rating:
Summary: This a now a must-have application.
Review: I've given IHateSpam only fours stars because I haven't used it long enough to honestly add another star, yet. I will say that I'm far more pleased with it than my other commercial product, Spamkiller 4.0. Both programs have the same functions. IHateSpam integrates smoothly into Outlook Express with a simple initial setup. Spamkiller acts an stand-alone intermediary between your email client and server. Spamkiller 5.0 is promised to be integrated into Outlook. IHateSpam performs it job without noticably slowing down my email delivery unlike Spamkiller. It also does not require the installation of additional resource hogging software meant largely for the purpose of nagging you buy more software and services from the manufacturer, an odd feature in the other software product, purportly designed to eliminate spam.

Rating:
Summary: Update to My Review
Review: I noticed one person had rated this poor due to problems with program crashing. The was once true in the early versions but has now been corrected on my computer. They have an auto update feature which has run 4 times now in 4 months on mine and each time the program got better and more stable. Now, I never get a crash. SO, IF YOU BUY THIS, MAKE SURE YOU TURN ON THEIR AUTO-UPDATE BUTTON BECAUSE THEY ARE CONSTANTLY IMPROVING IT SO IT RUNS MORE STABLE. YOU CAN ALSO CHECK FOR UPDATES WITH ONE BUTTON IF YOU PREFER.

Rating:
Summary: Saved My Email!
Review: I was receiving so much junk mail each day that it was getting to the point that communication through email was getting impossible. Out of 5 "real" messages, I would have 30 junk messages. My email address was on my business cards and other material, so it would be difficult to go to another email address. I purchased iHateSpam about a month ago and after some "teaching" the software what was junk or real, it slowly got better and better. Now, it catches 95% of my junk mail when used properly with Outlook Express own rule system. I found that it is a good idea to send the junk mail to your delelte box so you can make sure it did not just dump a good friend before deleting all of the junk. The only problem I have found with the program is when it makes or you make someone an "Enemy", it is very hard to change that back to "friend". Even after I remark them as a friend, the next day it still treats as ememy. Overall, it has beat everything else I tried hands down. I do wish it had a system to bombard the spamer with spam back to jam their servers as the internet community trys to save itself from this junk! David-Chicago

Rating:
Summary: leaves a lot to be desired
Review: I am using this software with the full version of Outlook and using the default level of protection. It filters my spam emails down from about 100/day to about 10/day, however even after spending the $ for the full version of Outlook there are significant bugs and limitations to this solution.

The biggest issue is the lack of support and definition updates. Spam is constantly evolving to be more difficult to detect, and yet the last major release of this product is now a half year old, and the product update process does not work well at all. My correspondence with the company has been unanswered or I have been directed to install even older versions to work around bugs. Clicking to receive the latest definition updates has no discernable effect upon the filter effectiveness or lack thereof.

It does not fully support organization rules that sort email into different mailboxes. If you are using multiple mailboxes they do not automatically get filtered and you need to manually click Clean Mailbox | Unread Mail every day on one or more mailboxes.

Also, I found the automatic spam reporting capabilities (notifying policing agencies) to be unusable. At this point I manually forward the few most offensive items to spamcop and delete the rest.

On the good side there have been almost no cases where it mistakenly quarantined mail that I desired to receive.
----------------------------------
February 2004 update - the support on this software is very poor. new spammer techniques bypass the detection algorithms and the updates have not kept up. The software only allows me to mark 19 emails as spam at a time, and it takes over 20 seconds to mark those 19 spam emails. This is becoming almost unusable and I am revising my year old reccomendation downwards from 3 stars to 1 star. Look elsewhere for something more effective.