Review: SpamSieve 2.6

Ever since I learned that those body-part enlargement pills really don’t work all that well, I’ve been less inclined to want to read all of those swell email messages that I get each day.

Which is a fabulous reason to pull the lever for filtering spam. It’s common for email client software applications to offer some type of spam filtering, typically configured in the program’s preferences. The problem is this: They don’t always work all that well; some are more effective than others.

Apple’s Mail 3.2 does a pretty good job at identifying spam (and taking appropriate action), but as the number of IMAP email accounts grew on my system, so did my need for spam filtering. It wasn’t just that I was getting more messages from more accounts; it seemed that, in general, the built-in Junk Mail filter in Mail.app was becoming less effective over time.

Enter SpamSieve 2.6, a third-party (Macintosh only) Spam filter that works with the big players in the Macintosh email space: Eudora, Apple’s Mail, Entourage, Mailsmith, Thunderbird and a few others.

The idea is simple: one configures the email client software to accommodate the SpamSieve plug in (readers take note: I didn’t say “install” the software). Sadly, the user is required to manually configure the system. It isn’t difficult, but it requires reading a guide, and paying attention; Doing both of those things annoys me, in general.

Following the setup, one begins training the system to by identifying spam messages and non-spam messages. I found this part to be simple: one merely locates a whole bunch of spam messages and marks them as such. And who doesn’t have a whole bunch of spam lying around?

Fast forward a month. Using SpamSieve on two different Macintosh systems (a Mac Pro 2.8 and a MacBook Pro 2.33) I have had generally good results, certainly better than the systems that I’d used in the past, including Apple’s own Junk filtering system. Interestingly, the license allows for installation and use on both systems (at the same time). At least, that’s how I read the License Agreement.

In general, I visit the “spam” folder on my system regularly, to identify false-positives (I’ve had very, few). It would appear that over time, the system is becoming even more effective, as I “train” the system further. For some reason, that didn’t work with the Apple Junk Mail system. I had thought that identifying messages as spam would increase it’s efficiency, but that doesn’t appear to have been the case. Hence, my switch to SpamSieve.

A couple of complaints: First, the installation process should have been automated. I am surprised that a software developer that can crank out this top-notch Spam solution can’t write a decent installer. On the other hand, maybe there are technical reasons for that…

Second: I would welcome some type of method to get my two computers’ spam filters to talk to one another, and update each other’s index. That way, when my Mac Pro receives a huge batch of messages (many of them spam), the MacBook Pro can get that info into it’s own database of bad messages. One idea: Call the folks who made Yojimbo; they figured out a swell way of syncing data by leveraging the .Mac function. And it works. Perfectly.

All told: I’m happy with SpamSieve, especially given the price point: $30.00, which is less than a tank of gas. Check it out here.