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New Weapons in the Antispam Wars

Neil J. Rubenking
 & Neil J. Rubenking Principal Writer, Security

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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    Buying Guide: New Weapons in the Antispam Wars

    Contents

    As spammers devise new ways to fill your in-box with porn, pills, and prime mortgages, antispam companies scramble to keep up. Here we evaluate three current weapons in the fight to keep spam from overwhelming your work day: InBoxer 2.0, OnlyMyEmail Personal, and SpamCatcher 4.

    We used a spam-infested PC Magazine e-mail address, split at the server side into identical e-mail streams. To start, we let a month's worth of mail (over 10,000 messages) flow into the in-boxes monitored by each of the three tools, which all rely on filtering. Where possible, we corrected any misfiled messages, giving the products a chance to learn and improve their filtering. Then we cleared out those messages and let the products run for ten days on their own, comparing them with Microsoft Outlook's Junk E-Mail filter. We manually identified each of the over 2,000 messages that arrived as definitely spam, definitely valid, or neither. We exported header data from each in-box using a beta version of askSam 6. By matching the unique Message-ID field, we were able to check whether the products correctly distinguished spam and valid messages.

    Only Outlook completely avoided misfiling good mail as spam, but the results from OnlyMyEmail were impressive. With no training, it blocked just one valid message and allowed less than 0.5 percent of spam into the in-box. And because unwanted messages never reach the in-box, it was blazingly fast as well.

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    About Our Expert

    Neil J. Rubenking

    Neil J. Rubenking

    Principal Writer, Security

    My Experience

    When the IBM PC was new, I served as the president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years. That’s how I met PCMag’s editorial team, who brought me on board in 1986. In the years since that fateful meeting, I’ve become PCMag’s expert on security, privacy, and identity protection, putting antivirus tools, security suites, and all kinds of security software through their paces.

    Before my current security gig, I supplied PCMag readers with tips and solutions on using popular applications, operating systems, and programming languages in my "User to User" and "Ask Neil" columns, which began in 1990 and ran for almost 20 years. Along the way, I wrote more than 40 utility articles, as well as Delphi Programming for Dummies and six other books covering DOS, Windows, and programming. I also reviewed thousands of products of all kinds, ranging from early Sierra Online adventure games to AOL’s precursor Q-Link.

    In the early 2000s, I turned my focus to security and the growing antivirus industry. After years of working with antivirus, I’m known throughout the security industry as an expert on evaluating antivirus tools. I serve as an advisory board member for the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO), an international nonprofit group dedicated to coordinating and improving testing of anti-malware solutions.

    The Technology I Use

    Much of the testing I do, particularly testing with real-world ransomware, is just plain dangerous. To perform such tests safely, I sequester them inside virtual machines managed by VMWare Workstation. For cross-platform testing, I use a MacBook Air, a Google Pixel 4, and a 6th-generation iPad.

    I rely on my Delphi coding skills to create and maintain small applications. These include programs to check whether an antivirus correctly handled the malware it detected, launch dangerous URLs and record the security program’s reaction, and analyze the malware that I collect for use in testing. I also wrote a tiny browser and text editor for use in testing security apps that have predefined reactions for known products.

    I do my writing and research on a Dell OptiPlex desktop, relying on Microsoft Word (my fingers know all the shortcuts). Many of my articles include charts and analysis; Excel is my go-to for those. When work hours end, though, I escape the bounds of Microsoft and Windows. There’s an iPhone in my pocket, I relax with my oversized iPad, and my Kindle Oasis is always loaded with the best science fiction and fantasy.

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