Is your inbox getting flooded with junk mails that are obviously spam (and maybe some that are not so obvious)? There are hundreds of anti-spam solutions out there, some free, some paid, and some are themselves scams!
We bring you two solutions depending on your budget and how much control you would like over your spam fighting efforts.
Article Overview
Gmail – Free, Easy, And Powerful
If you’re using Gmail, you have one of the best free, built-in spam blockers on the market. You can also use Gmail to host your existing email address, it doesn’t have to be a Google (i.e. gmail) email address. Either way, you have access to their cloud hosted anti-spam filter which will nail much of the spam, scam, and phishing attempts coming your way.
Gmail is mobile-friendly and offers an app.
Top 4 Gmail Cons
Potential negatives for Gmail include:
- Unless you’re using the web interface, arrive at your computer before they are checked for spam.
- The spam filter itself is not very customizable
- Some of our readers are concerned about Google’s privacy policy and their reputation for using user data.
- Gmail is not a stand-alone solution that integrates with their existing mail client.
Mailwasher – Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android Support
MailWasher separates itself from the pack by allowing you to screen emails before they even arrive at your inbox. You can literally see the contents of an email through a secure viewer without having to open the email message itself. This effectively reduces the risk of getting exposed to viruses and spyware to zero.
MailWasher gets smarter the more you use it. In addition to friends and foes (white and black) lists that let you specify email addresses, domains, etc. you wish to permanently allow and block (make sure your friends don’t get flagged as spam by accident – once they’re added to the white list, they’ll always get through), MailWasher taps into a global database of spam signatures in real time, which lets the software prepare itself for email spam messages before they even get to you. By the time they do, the filter will catch them, and flag them for deletion. You can eyeball the message and confirm that it’s actually spam before letting it be deleted.
Finally, if you delete a message by accident – don’t worry! You’ll have access to a recycle bin of deleted messages that you can use to quickly and easily restore legitimate messages.
Mailwasher Versions
There are three versions of Mailwasher:
- Mailwasher Pro (Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, Vista and XP)
- Mailwasher Server (Windows and Linux)
- Mailwasher Mobile (iOS and Android)
MailWasher works with every email program, since all email programs support POP3 or IMAP. eg. Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Mail, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, GMail, Hotmail, AOL, Incredimail, Postbox, Outlook.com, Yahoo and so on.
Mailwasher is mobile-friendly and offers an app.
Mailwasher Pricing
Normally $39.95/year, but our members get a discount. Click here for $29.95/year (includes a 30-day free trial option).
Spam Bully – Windows, Office, Outlook, and IMAP Support
7 Key features of Spam Bully:
- Bayesian Spam Filter – Intelligently knows which emails you’ve received are good and which are spam by using artificial intelligence and server blacklists. Makes sure good emails make it to your Inbox.
- Allow/Block List – Decide who and what makes it into your Inbox.
- Punish/Bounce/Report/Challenge – Get back at spammers by increasing their costs, returning their spam, and reporting them to the servers they came from and the FTC. Email a special password to an unfamiliar sender that they must correctly type in before their email is allowed to your Inbox.
- Auto-Delete – Optionally you can just delete spam messages instead of sorting them to a spam folder. You never have to see a spam message again.
- Cellphone Forwarding – Forward only good email to your cell phone.
- Statistics – Comprehensive graphing and statistics shows you how well SpamBully is working.
- Multi-Language Interface – Easily and automatically convert Spam Bully into English, Spanish, German.
Spam Bully Pricing
$29.95/year, including a free trial option. Click here to see if there’s a member discount on top of that (occasionally available).
Spam Bully Compatibility
Spam Bully works with:
- Office 365
- Office 2019 and older
- Outlook (including 64-bit) & Outlook Express
- Live Mail
- Windows Mail
- IMAP
Other Spam Blocking Options
The market is flooded with anti-spam solutions. Are you aware of one you like or interested in one you’d like us to look into? Let us know in the comments so our researchers can investigate.
Spam Blocking – Best Practices
We find that Gmail and MailWasher aren’t useful just to combat spam – they are useful for unsubscribing to newsletters with the click of a button (no clicking through landing pages and entering your email address again). Mailwasher gives you even more fine tuned control of this – let’s say you’re signed up for an email newsletter, but you’re only interested in two out of three of their messages on average. Simply check those you’re not interested in for deletion.
Additionally, you can quick respond to emails within MailWasher itself – without needing to open up your email application. And lastly, you can securely analyze and open links within messages, although we recommend as a rule of thumb never opening email links, but rather, visiting the website directly, or at the very least – conducting a search in Google of the website domain name prior to visiting it.
How To Remove Yourself From A Blacklist
If a malicious user gets a hold of your email account, or worse, email server, it’s possible that the server sending your email could be blacklisted, which means legitimate emails you send out may end up in recipients spam folders and not getting to them. Read our article on email blacklists to learn more and find out how to remove yourself from email blacklists.
Find an effective way to fight spam? Let us know in the comments!
Tagged With: Email, Spam
