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SpamKiller 5.0

SpamKiller 5.0

List Price: $39.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: AVOID THIS PRODUCT!!!!
Review: (Zero star rating if possible)

If you have Outlook 2000, skip this product. It requires you have a MAPI e-mail account and not a POP3 account as most home computer users have. It seems to have a big history of crashes and unexplainable behavior. If you take the time to read the McAfee support board, you will see all the problems this product has.

Avoid! Run away from this one! Burning your money would provide more value for you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Very disappointed
Review:
I paid my money and I took my chances. I already had Spamkiller 4, which stopped about 80% of the spam, and wanted to upgrade to version 5. Very disappointing. I downloaded the program, but couldn't get it to register with the company, until finally I disabled my firewall and Ad/Subtract (anti pop-up) programs. Finally it registered, but upon turning on my computer, I was notified that Spamkiller was NOT protecting my computer. And, sure enough, it wasn't. I tried everything I could think of. Nada! It stopped nothing, and I got over 200 spam messages in a few hours.

Also, I was directed to change my server settings to "localhost" for incoming mail, and my e-mail address for outgoing. My server would not accept those settings. Not only was the spam stopped, but all of my e-mail, incoming and outgoing!

Finally, after two or three days of frustration, i decided to take my lumps (40 dollars), and go to Norton, which I should have done in the first place. I've had (and dropped) McAfee's antivirus program in the past, in favor of Norton's, and I'm also running Norton's firewall and have been happy with them--especially their automatic updates and, unlike McAfee, they don't hit you up for more money seemingly every other day!

Norton's program loaded quickly and easily, registered with no problem, and is now up and running. So far it is stopping virtually all spam.

These two--Norton and McAfee--are reputed to be the leading anti virus programs, as well as anti spam programs. Of the two, based on my own experience, I prefer the former. One of the big failures of McAfee is their failure to provide an up-front e-mail address where you can contact them for support. They do provide a phone number, but they want something like a buck-and-a-half a minute. I don't know whether that includes a ten-minute wait, filled with elevator music, or not.

Another reasonably good anti-spam program, which I tried briefly before going to Spamkiller 4, was one called "I Hate Spam." Neither of them allowed you to block a given spammer with a single key-stroke, however.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre<

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I'd give it zero stars if I could.
Review: After three installs and uninstalls of this program, I've had it. Spam still gets thru, Outlook locks-up, same problems over and over. SpamKiller should be put to sleep.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great product, but has room for improvement.
Review: Alot of people who rated this 1 star[], and I suggest you not look at their reviews at all if you are just an average home user. For average home users, this program is an excellent choice.

Now for improvements.

1) I'd rather not have to use the program outside of Outlook to send spam alerts to ISP's and email providers. Rather, I'd prefer if spam killer integrated more into Outlook like it says it should.

2) A more updated abuse email list for email and ISP's. Why should we have to do this manually? For a program that was around $20-30, there should be some sort of updated database on email and ISP abuse emails to send the spam to.

3) A more detailed information or disection of email headers so we can send the abuse report to the PROPER authorities. I think if we were able to do this, the spam would be cut down a little bit. Not significantly, since there is no governmental regulation on email spam (yet), but at least enough to get rid of annoyances.

So other than an update with a few fixes and upgrades (that should be for free), this is a decent program that is alot better than the built-in rules that come with Outlook.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Much more Work than just deleting the spam to start with!
Review: As a dedicated McAfee user, I was excited about the SpamKiller release. It took very little time to get over it. Others complain about it's use with Outlook and I must add that it is just as lousy with Eudora.

The most frustrating part is having to go through each spam email, one-by-one, request to delete it, then confirm I want to delete it. In my Eudora Inbox, I can easily recognize 98% of Spam and use my shift key to delete several spams at once. The "Select more than one" Shift and/or Cntl keys don't function in the SpamKiller filter, so you have to delete each email one-by-one

-OR-

You could leave spam in the filter and let the filter delete it. The problem is.. If You receive large quantities of spam, then your filter gets sooooo full, you can hardly find friendly emails that get marked as spam. If you set a very small window for deletion ("Delete spam in 1 day"), and you ever miss a day - you will loose legitimate emails you want.

For someone who receives legitimate emails from strangers, using the "friends" feature is pointless.. I have new "friends" all the time.. Which always (so far) get tagged as Spam. If I change the filter options to not mark certain email types as spam, it seems to decide nothing is spam and I get a box full of it! The filters are fickle too.. I've had them stop blocking anything, only to start in again, and I've had trouble even getting my mail at all since installing SpamKiller. I can turn SpamKiller off, and get hords of junk emails even though I had just checked my mail and got nothing.

This program is a grave disappointment. Don't buy it (yet).. Wait for a better version or buy something else. I'm going to uninstall it.. It's cumbersome, clugey, and unhelpful!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: THIS POS IS SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: First you have to install the spam portion of Mcafee PORTION that is nothing BUT SPAM ITSELF.....

Then after your machine rewrites Eudora a couple of dozend times. Five reinstalls so that you can finally un-install this garbage.

Hopefull you won't lose as much e-mail and time as I did

AVOID THIS PRODUCT..

MCAFFEE YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED...YOUR PRODUCT THREE YEARS AGO WAS MUCH BETTER THAN THIS TANK

I probably will never get a refund after a 20 min long distance call I hung up!!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: More hassle than it saves
Review: First, it does not integrate with Outlook unless you have an active MAPI account, which is funny because it advertises integration with Outlook, but in the set up it mentions most people have POP3 accounts, which is true, so for most people it does not integrate with Outlook!

Second, it installs this useless "Security Center" (aka Ad Center) which you can't uninstall unless you uninstall Spamkiller! Security Center just tells you what you already know (what security programs you have installed) and pushes Mcafee products by saying "well, if you had mcafee antivirus....blah blah...." I have Norton Antivirus leave me alone!

Also, I hear support is a joke so I haven't even tried. I regret buying this and of course, will avoid Mcafee products from now on.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: SpamKiller is Dead!
Review: I have been a very happy user of SpamKiller 4.0.... I have recommended it to several clients.....
They REALLY messed up a good product with this upgrade.... I installed 4 times trying to get it to run... 2 of the 4 with tech support.... it will run, then after the 20 minutes of setup and 30 minutes more of tweaking the filters... it "@(#RasberrySound looses everything... including any email you have received good or bad.... After wasting about 4 hours with it I went back to the Wonderful 4.0 version..... Don't upgrade.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It actually does work (for the most part)!
Review: I have only have been using the program for about week, but have seen promising results. I usually receive approx. 30-40 pieces of spam a day. The SpamKiller 5.0 has actually filtered out most of the spam. If it does filter out something that is not spam, then the real e-mail can be easily retrieved and the sender's name could be added to a friends list to avoid future blocking. During the instillation process, the program only claimed to have noticed my seldom used Outlook Express mailbox and not my Outlook program, which I use for two POP3 accounts. The instructions are not much help with this issue, but the program somehow ended up working with Outlook in a Windows XP environment. Besides the confusing intructions, the other minor another annoyance is the McAfee Security Center that pushes the purchase of McAfee's newest virus scan--it will not recoginize an older verision that has been updated on a regular basis. (The Security Center can be easily ignored and it does not interfere with any programming.) Overall, the product does remove significant amounts spam in an unintrusive manner.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: You really need to read the user's manual
Review: I purchased, installed, used, and reviewed all Amazon customer reviews prior to composing this review. McAfee Spamkiller. version 5, is rated 4.5 in most computer journals, but rated only 1.5 of 5 by Amazon reviewers. That's a big contrast. I used versions 4,5, and 6 and Norton's 2005 antispam also. I'm using McAfee version 5 now with Windows XP on a computer with 512 MB ram and a 1.6 GHz processor. I use Netscape 7.2 mail and Thunderbird Mail, both are Mozilla, POP3. I will not use Microsoft Outlook or AOL which contribute to spam. I run McAfee Spamkiller version 5 with ZoneAlarm, Norton AntiVirus, and Webwasher without conflicts.

I used McAfee's free problem by email technical support option. I received a clearly written and accurate response within 24 hours. The pay-as-you-go telephonic support or the subscription based support ($40) costs more than it is worth. McAfee SpamKiller is OK, good enough, but over priced. It is more versatile than McAfee version 6 or Norton's anti spam/spam killer version 2005.

Nevertheless, whenever I travel and my computer is dormant for several weeks and my mail is accumulating on the ISP server, my spam count drops to 10 percent. When I return from travel and turn on my computer and McAfee or Norton intercept my spam it starts a cascade of new spam even though the spam is never opened or replied and before I browse the Internet. In my opinion, there is something in the software that returns my now active address to spammers. It happens too often to be coincidence.

Spam killing is not easy for any home-based user protecting against professional spamming software developers who are usually more competent than those designing the spam killing tools. The tools are out-of-date before they are provided to the public. Killing spam is constantly a matching of wits requiring thoroughly reading the user's manual and constantly tweaking your settings. No spam killer is "install and forget." In my opinion McAfee SpamKiller 5 provides more versatile anti spam tools than any other general use spam killing software and it works well with Netscape/Messenger and Thunderbird/Firefox. It works best only after going to your mail preference menu, server settings, and turning off (1) check for new messages at startup, (2) check for new messages every __ minutes, and (3) auto download new messages. Also turn off Instant Messenger. You have to do this because McAfee software designers will not design a compatible system. Otherwise mail and McAfee are fighting each other. Hence McAfee versions 5 and 6 are not worth the price asked. But , version 5 is worth the discounted price charged by resellers.

If you insist on using Microsoft email products like Outlook, Instant Messenger, or using AOL you fight the spam battle with one arm tied behind your back and no spam killer will do much good.


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