eTrust Anti-Spam

Formerly known as Qurb, eTrust Anti-Spam simplifies the process of inbox protection by foregoing user-defined message filters in favor of automated safe-sender lists culled from the contents of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. To be precise, the utility grabs every email address it can find within these two Microsoft email clients and then grants clearance to any message sent from these addresses, these addresses are combined to make a whitelist.

The utility updates the list each time the user sends email to a new address, and the user can further refine the list by manually adding safe addresses to it or by plucking safe addresses from the folder of quarantined messages.

Anti-Spam creates its list of safe senders during the installation. At the same time, the utility inventories all of the messages, attachments, appointments, and contact information contained within Outlook and Outlook Express. The resulting index is used by Anti-Spam’s unique Email Search feature, a nifty extra that helps a user locate any piece of information contained within the email client.

Anti-Spam locked up Outlook when it initially attempted to build its index on the system. The problem was resolved by a reboot, too, as phone support is available only at the rate of $29.95 per incident (email support is free) again, but it got us off to a slow start.

We had no other serious issues with eTrust Anti-Spam. The utility offered convenient toolbar access for making one-click additions to the list of safe senders. Such ongoing training is necessary, of course. We ended up reviewing the quarantine folder from time to time to obtain legitimate messages from unrecognized senders, but the process is over in a matter of seconds and common to all good antispam utilities. We do wish eTrust Anti-Spam would have supported all POP (Post Office Protocol) and MAPI (Messaging Application Program Interface) clients and not only Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express. Such a limitation prevents users of other email clients, including Netscape and Mozilla, from using the program.

[tags]eTrust, Anti-Spam[/tags]