A Great, Free Solution to Spam

I have found the solution to spam. It's freeware, and I swear to you, it works better than anything else I've tried. It's called POPFile. For those using Outlook 2000/2002 with MAPI/Exchange accounts, the Outclass extension (which uses POPFile as its engine) is what you want.

Installation and Use

If you just want to get going, here's what I recommend:

• (Work users) Exchange accounts via Outlook: install (but don't bother configuring) POPFile first, then install Outclass.  (note 10/23/03: use POPFile 0.19, not 0.20.)
• (Home users) POP accounts via Outlook Express: use POPFile. It's a little bit of a pain to configure, but it's worth the effort.

The documentation at both sites is more than adequate.

'Training' the Software

When first installed, POPFile is completely dumb -- it knows nothing about your mail. You have to teach it what's spam and what's not. This really doesn't take long, it turns out, before POPFile starts properly classifying your mail with amazing accuracy. See the documentation for more details.

After 6 Months of Use...

Here are my stats.  Notice that out of over 1700 messages, it's only screwed up 27 times, for an accuracy rate over over 98%.  That's incredible. 

These stats are for my home account.  I get much, much more mail, and spam, at work -- I come in to 100+ spam every Monday.  I don't know what I'd do without POPFile/Outclass at work.  About 60% of my e-mail volume at work is spam.  Having it neatly stuffed into a folder before I ever see it is a godsend.

Note that POPFile's accuracy gets better as you train it more. They recommend a procedure called 'Training On Error' (TOE), where you only tell POPFile when it screws up. This keeps the accuracy high, keeps the word counts down, and keeps the performance good.

I find that Outclass is easier to use, for a few reasons:

• it doesn't change the subject lines of the messages
• it puts a little toolbar right in Outlook with the few necessary buttons
• reclassifying a message is a one-click operation, and Outclass automatically moves the message back into the right folder (POPFile doesn't)

Rumor has it that Outclass will be an included extension to POPFile in the future.

Background Reading

This is a very interesting article about spam from the author of POPFile.