Woody's EMAIL Essentials

Make electronic mail work better for you

Spam solutions/Mis-categorized WEE/Our Favorite Blockers/Ella for Spam Control/Semi-sabbatical
11 May 2004 - Vol. 2 No.5

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@ Spam solutions

Last issue we did a run-down on some of the major spam-fighting techniques: how they work, how they don't work, which ones look most promising. This issue, I'll introduce you to one of the best anti-spam programs around, and in coming issues we'll parade some others which we at Woody's Watch like and use.

As we muck around in the topic of spam, keep a few things in mind:

There is no magic bullet. Spam is a moving target and there is no solution, as yet, that completely eliminates it from your life.
There is no best solution. But there is, most likely, a best solution for you. Work out what matters to you (ease of use, fine control, absolutely no false positives, advanced options) and look for those things when choosing an anti-spam tool. The programs we use and recommend may not suit you, but hopefully our recommendations will help you assess your own spam blocking needs.
Find a solution which gives you relief. Even the best anti-spam product won't entirely eliminate the need to deal with spam, but it should make dealing with spam no more than a tolerable nuisance. The aim is to reclaim your email, making it, once more, feel like a good and useful thing in your life, instead of a burden.
Be wary of solutions which are not under your control, such as non-local black lists and ISP-based spam blocking. Those technologies may be useful to you, but any "solution" which blocks legitimate email as well as spam (known as 'false positives') is no solution.

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@ Mis-categorized WEE

That last point is the reason why -- as many of you have emailed to let us know -- some issues of WEE may not reach your inbox.

Not only do some spam filters regularly block newsletters to which you have subscribed, they also go berserk when they see mention of the word "spam". Bang! That's all that's required to set off some trigger-happy spam filters. It only gets worse when we try to talk about other spam topics, such as email containing advertisements for the dreaded "v" word.

There are a couple of things you can do about this. The most important is to add WEE (and any other newsletters you wish to receive) to your safe/trusted senders list - aka White List.

For Woody's Watch newsletters it's: woodyswatch.com and lists.woodyswatch.com - depending on exactly how the filter works. If in doubt put both domains in the 'safe' list.

Almost all email programs let you set up such a list, as do many anti-spam solutions. You should also check any filters or mail rules you've set up and ensure you've added the necessary exceptions to ensure valid senders get through. Finally, make sure you go through your spam/junk folder and check for legitimate email which has ended up in there. Such "false positives" are the big danger in using anti-spam techniques, but most anti-spam products let you reassign mis-categorized email.

Of course, if your ISP has implemented automatic spam blocking, you may find you have no control over what gets through to your inbox. While most ISPs let you review mail they've blocked as spam, some don't. It's a knee-jerk, insane response. But then, the overwhelming nature of spam tends to elicit such responses. Check out what your ISP is doing about spam. If it has implemented a solution which gives you no control, email them and complain. If you do get a chance to review email classified as spam, learn how to make the best use of your ISP's solution.

Here's a list of Outlook add-ins that can save time and improve your productivity:
* Attachment Save - automatically saves attachments to a Windows folder
* Schedule Recurring Email - Are you sending the same emails over and over?
* Auto Print - automatically print just email or just attachments
* Plus 27 other Outlook add-ins

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@ Our favorite blockers

The gang which brings WEE and the other Woody's Watch newsletters to you lives and breathes email, so it's not surprising each of us has spent a good deal of time searching for a workable spam solution.

Maybe it's not surprising that we've come up with different solutions, too. After all, the way we interact with email and software in general is a very personal process, so there's rarely a one-size-fits-all solution.

In coming issues you'll get to hear from other members of the team, and from other WEE readers who've already let us know their favorite spam blockers (MailWasher currently seems to be the most popular). This issue, I'll give you the lowdown on my pick: Ella.

@ Ella

Ella for Spam Control has been around for a year, making it a moderately recent entrant to the spam blockers club. It seems to have benefited from being late to market. It is extraordinarily easy to use, speedy, accurate right out of the box, and learns from its mistakes. It slips itself into Outlook or Outlook Express with little effect on performance.

Ella not only separates spam from desirable email, it also lets you sort your email into three (renamable) folders: Inbox, Newsletters and Spam. That way, with a little training you can have Ella shunt newsletters and other non-urgent email to one folder, isolate Spam, and keep your Inbox purely for those things which require your attention now.

When you first launch Outlook or Outlook Express after installing Ella, Ella runs you through a quick training session in which you provide 10 examples of each type of email -- so make sure you have some spam on hand. After that very brief training, Ella is ready to go to work.

When I first tested Ella after a brief training session it achieved a remarkable 1.9 percent false positive rating (on a sample of 1000 assorted emails and spam), and that excellent rating dropped to zero after more training. A further 1.7 percent of personal emails found their way into the Newsletter folder. Ella didn't do quite as well initially with keeping spam out of the Inbox, but after training it became much smarter about recognizing spam.

(Note: I tested Ella as part of a comparative review of nine spam products in September 2003. Ella's initial result on false positives was far better than that achieved by any of the other programs. The other products I tested against Ella were: ChoiceMail One 1.5 (2.5); CloudMark SpamNet 1.1 (2.4.3); iHateSpam Outlook Edition 3.2 (4.0.4); K9 1.1 (1.28); MailWasher Pro 3.1 (4.0); McAfee SpamKiller 4 (5); Qurb 1.2 (2.0); and SpamSubtract Pro 1.74 (1.81). Many of these products have been upgraded since -- some quite dramatically, as you can see from the current version numbers displayed in parentheses above. I've also tried at least a dozen other anti-spam solutions in the meantime, but I've seen no reason to abandon Ella.)

Ella's ability to learn on the job is one of its great appeals. The program uses a very specialized anti-spam approach based on advanced machine-learning technology. The result is a highly adaptive response which handles the ever-changing tactics of spammers with aplomb.

But what I really love about Ella is it never puts good email into the Spam folder and it is drop-dead easy to use. If you like to control every aspect of your spam filter, you'll hate Ella. But if you want a solution that slips in, goes to work, and improves on the job with minimal effort on your part, Ella's a dream.

There's a free version of Ella which adds a small advertisement to the bottom of out-going emails. The ad-free version costs $US29.95.

Cons: Works only with Outlook (version 2000 or later) on Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP, and on Outlook Express on Windows NT/2000/XP; doesn't offer any fine control; doesn't catch 100% of spam.

Pros: Deliciously easy to use; fast; gets better over time; works in conjunction with mail rules and other spam filters; doesn't classify good email as spam (ie. no false positives).

@ Semi-sabbatical

Just a reminder for those of you who've sent us e-mail asking where all the newsletters are: Both Woody and Peter are taking semi-breaks from producing the newsletters to focus on family, sleep and other commitments. So for a while Woody's Email Essentials and the other Woody's Watch newsletters will not be appearing as often as usual. WEE will still appear in your Inbox, but you'll get fewer issues for a few months.

Talk Email

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