Free Spam Blocker Software
Spam mail has increased at such a rate over the last few years that it now accounts for over 90% of all emails. Thankfully, there are a few free ways to get spam free email. To find out more about what spam is and how to take steps to prevent spam head over to our spam prevention section. Or if your inbox is already bulging with spam you could try one of the free spam blockers below.
Agnitum Spam Terrier
Agnitum Spam Terrier is a free spam filter in the form of a toolbar which is added to your email software. The toolbar contains red and green buttons to mark messages as spam or legitemate email. The toolbar also contains a drop-down menu for access to options, scan folders, help and a spam training facility.
The training set-up uses a Baysian filter which helps train the software to intelligently improve the identification of spam mail. Agnitum Spam Terrier can be set to automatically detect spam and can also be personalised using sensitivity thresholds, white and black email lists as well as providing an on-demand scanning facility.
Installation is straight forward and the program is available for download for Windows 98 through to Windows XP. Agnitum Spam Terrier supports POP3 as well as IMAP and installs for Outlook and Outlook Express email clients. During the set-up process it's important to spend a little time to train the software into recognising your preferences including your white and black lists and and sensitivity settings.
Mailwasher Free
The free version of Mailwasher lets you choose which messages you want to download from the server to your PC. Messages can be deleted or bounced back preventing viruses or large downloads doing any harm to your computer. The free version is available for use with just one email address only, and marks spam in red and trusted email in green.
A friend list ensures that Mailwasher does not block your friends email and a customisable blacklist and filtering tools provides automatic spam identification. Baysian filtering cleverly learns to identify spam more accurately and any dubious emails can be quickly previewd before downloading to your machine.
Mailwasher works in a different way to other spam filtering tools in that it attempts to block spam on the server side before it reaches your machine. When Mailwahser starts, messages identified as spam will be marked with a tick in the deleted column, which ensures they will be deleted from the server. You can then chose to uncheck any messages you feel have been wrongly identified as spam before hitting the process mail button. After you click the process mail button, all clean email will be downloaded to your email client saving you precious time reading through all those spam mails.
SpamBrave Free Spam Blocker
SpamBrave works with Outlook Express and Windows Mail to provide a simple spam filtering toolbar to prevent junk mail. The set-up wizard will guide you through the initial set-up and training to your personal preferences.
Spam Blocker learns from your filtering behaviour as it actively adapts it's spam identification processes. It can also check against public blacklists and uses Baysian statistics in an attempt to improve filtering. SpamBrave filters emails into the inbox, spam folder and unsure folder. You then have the ability to re-classify any email SpamBrave has incorreclty identified using the 'not spam' and 'spam' buttons on the toolbar. This provides users with a simple and intuitive interface to quickly identify and remove spam.
SpamBrave will then learn from it's mistakes and should then re-classify any future incoming email correctly. SpamBrave integrates with your Windows Address Book, allows you to add email addresses to the allowed/blocked list and works with POP email accounts.
You may already have a free spam blocker and don't know about it
Most Internet Service Providers such as AOL and BT now incorporate some form of free anti-spam software for their customers.
If you are not sure if your Internet provider has a free spam filter, then check their homepage, or contact them for further information. You may not already be aware that some of you mail is being filtered and that sometimes spam filters can be a little bit too thorough. Therefore, it is important to know what mail is being blocked, to ensure that you are not losing any important emails to the spam filter.
Maybe your mail program can act as a free spam blocker?
For those who use outlook or outlook express, or some other email client, then you can usually set up a spam blocker using special rules to filter out specific word(s) which can appear in spam.
In outlook you should find these under the tools -> rules wizard menu. Failing this, search the help for rules on how to set up different filters.
However, a lot of spammers are aware of these procedures and will often alter words slightly, or pass messages in pictures in an attempt to thwart email filters.
Further Information
There are quite a few free ways to help prevent spam. Therefore, it is worth doing some research before finding one which is most suited to your needs, depending on the software you have, or the Internet provider you are using.
Some spam software and filters provided from Internet companies can be a little over zealous in blocking spams. Therefore, make sure you understand your software so that you don't inadvertently block, or delete, that all important mail.
Other free anti spam software
Spam Fighter
Unlike MailWasher's spam blocker, SPAMfighter is a free spam filter for Outlook and Outlook express which automatically filters spam and phishing mail.
Anti-Spam Articles
What is spam and how to prevent spam.
What to do with unwanted email attachments.