Thursday, August 29, 2002
Matador Taste Test
The early results are in, and they’re very positive! (See my post below for the details on Matador.)
I have successfully installed it on my office computer, and I must say that I like it. Matador seems more sophisticated and has more configuration options than Cloudmark’s SpamNet, but both seem to be equally effective. It takes a while to look through all the available features, but I recommend doing so, as this will make sure that you’re combating your spam effectively.
One cool feature that only Matador has, as far as I can tell, is the ability to “challenge” certain e-mails. When an e-mail looks like spam but Matador isn’t sure, it will send an e-mail back to the sender to verify that the user is legitimate. The user is given a button to click that will allow their e-mail to be sent to you in the future. Pretty slick!
So, now that these “Holy Grails” of spam fighting are here (at least for Outlook users), where do we go from here? It’s hard to discern the business models involved, but one can probably assume that MailFrontier will take the approach of ZoneLabs with their free ZoneAlarm firewall software. Which is, there exists a free version with simple features, a Pro version that provides advanced features for a fee, and perhaps a server or enterprise-level product that would cost a whole bunch more.
Anyway, I’m just glad they’re here, and I’m sure millions of people would agree!
Posted by Cory Kleinschmidt
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
More Options for the Spam Weary
Matador, a nice-looking spam blocking solution from MailFrontier, is available as a free beta for users of Outlook (support is coming for Outlook Express, Eudora and other mail clients). Here’s the gist:
“Matador’s unique patent-pending Smart Select™ technology automatically sorts email using white lists, black lists, machine intelligence, and the community to determine messages that could be junk, and then verifies them with a challenge.”
This tool sounds very similar to Cloudmark, a collaborative P2P spam filter that debuted earlier this year. I run Cloudmark with Outlook on my home computer (a lousy eMachine), but due to some unknown incompatibility, it doesn’t work on my office machine (a gosh darn Dell!). So, as soon as I power up tomorrow at the office, I’m going to install Matador and see how it works.
If you use Outlook and get hundreds of spam every day like I do, these types of filters, which are much more effective than normal Outlook rules, are an absolute must!
Posted by Cory Kleinschmidt
Monday, August 05, 2002
Look on the Bright Side Dept.:
Two recent news stories make me want to believe that the socio-economic-techno-winds may soon blow in a saner direction: the New England Patriots’ stadium is no longer called CMGI Stadium, and the European Parliament just made spam against the law. Hey, it’s a start.
Posted by Andrew Goodman