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PC Reviews: Spam Buster

Personal note: I loathe spam, I simply abhor the concept and the users that flood the internet with their useless advertising. If the United States government had a backbone, they would crack down on these unscrupulous individuals to rid the internet of this bane. :) Fortunately there is a solution but it should never have come to this...

Spam Buster by the Contact Plus Corporation is one of the most useful internet related programs that should go hand in hand with a decent virus checker. As mentioned earlier in my ranting, I simply cannot stand spam and nothing is worse than connecting to the internet to find that your inbox is filled with junk e-mails. I had to even close one of my e-mail accounts down because of the amount of spam I was receiving.

To the uninitiated , spam is a word that describes junk e-mail and once your e-mail address is on a spam list, you are virtually guaranteed to receive endless amounts of junk e-mail from Viagra, competitions, viruses, casinos, pornography, weight loss schemes and a variety of other annoying e-mails that only just clutters up your mailbox program.

Fortunately Spam Buster by the Contact Plus Corporation not only prevents you from receiving spam but also protects your mailbox from unsolicited junk mail. The installation of Spam Buster automatically installed when I inserted the CD into CD-ROM drive on the test machine. Once the program was installed, I then proceeded to configure the program and I must admit that that the configuration was extremely simple. Novice users will also be happy to discover that the official web site for Spam Buster features a 16 minutes tutorial on how to configure the program.

The basic premise behind Spam Buster is to filter and delete unsolicited junk e-mails, so your local mailbox program is clean and free. Unlike other programs that prevent spam emails, Spam Buster has an algorithm that includes over 15,000 known spammers and includes a variety of filters that offers you 99% protection. Once the program is installed, it basically runs in the background and whenever you receive an e-mail, the program checks with the exception list to see whether the user is known. If the user is not known, the program than checks the message with a variety of filters and then double checks against  a blacklist of known spammers.

Although I now have a new e-mail account, I still unfortunately receive spam emails but once Spam Buster was installed, it virtually blocked over 95% of spam emails that I receive which is extremely impressive. The beauty of Spam Buster is that it doesn't download all your e-mail messages but rather it checks with your mail server whether you have any new messages or not. By double clicking on the Spam Buster icon, it then brings up a window of all your new messages on the server and you can manually delete your spam messages without them filling up your mailbox program.

Spam Buster also supports 12 e-mail accounts that ensures your home or small business computer is free of spam. You can even set Spam Buster to periodically check your mail server for new messages that is extremely useful. The only downside to Spam Buster is that you cannot run your mail program all the time because it will automatically download the messages without Spam Buster checking them. It is however a small price to pay for absolute protection. Spam Buster also supports a comprehensive chart system that displays how many messages were found with spam and the number of messages that has been deleted.

In conclusion, Spam Buster is the perfect internet related program that should be installed on all computers. It not only offers you piece of mind but prevents the endless myriad of junk e-mails that we are sometimes overwhelmed with. The installation and configuration was relatively easy and I would highly recommend this program to all users of e-mail. Check it out!

Andrew B

System Requirements

  • 486 (or Pentium 1) processor or higher
  • Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT & XP
  • 32MB RAM
  • 3MB Hard Drive Space
  • POP3 email account (e.g. Telstra BigPond, OptusNet, iPrimus) - Free e-mail accounts such as hotmail.com, yahoo.com and mail.com are not supported

The Final Say!

 
Value
8.9

Spam Buster
Review Date: 25 September 2003

Distributor: Manaccom

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