SonicWALL Email Security Desktop
SonicWALL Email Security Desktop has much in common with eTrust Anti-Spam. Like Anti-Spam, Email Security Desktop (formerly known as MailFrontier Desktop) is a rebranded product. And like eTrust Anti-Spam, it secures a system against spam by allowing messages from only those addresses that the user identifies in advance as legitimate. Both programs support POP and MAPI accounts through the Outlook and Outlook Express email clients only, and both are sold as one-year subscription services.
Anti-Spam and Email Security Desktop also boast similar features, including toolbar access, support for multiple accounts, and a challenge function, which allows the antispam utility to verify the identity of unrecognized senders by requesting that the senders respond correctly to a challenge question before the utility will forward their messages to the recipient
Yet there are differences between the two. One is apparent during the setup phase. Email Security Desktop provides several adjustable content filters that function independently of each other so that users can dictate with remarkable precision the degree to which they want to weed out messages containing sexual content, offensive language, get-rich quick schemes, gambling promotions, advertisements, and/or embedded images.
Anti-Spam does not have these filters. Email Security Desktop’s other distinguishing extras include a built-in reporting tool that provides users with real-time spam assessments and a wireless message forwarding feature by which legitimate messages are delivered to one or more wireless devices of the user’s choosing.
Of the four antispam utilities we considered this month, Email Security Desktop was the easiest to set up and use. For the most part, the program takes are of itself, which is good because calling for help is not an option (although email support is available).