With the scourge of junk email showing no sign of abating, using a spam filter of some description is unavoidable, particularly where children are likely to be on the receiving end of some offensive examples.

While spammers devise devious means of slipping their wares past rule-based filters, Spamnet adopts a more organic approach, relying on the collective judgement of close to a million users (or Spamfighters) to decide what is and isn't spam.

Available as a subscription-based add-on for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, downloaded email is checked against the Spamnet database and any matches automatically moved to a spam folder.

The Spamnet toolbar provides constantly updated statistics for both the individual and the Spamnet community as a whole. Additional buttons allow missed junk messages to be relayed back to Spamnet's database, as well as the unblocking of false positives.

For the Outlook version a trust system is used to weight reports, and members who routinely identify spam correctly will have more reliance placed on their opinion than those who block legitimate messages. It also prevents spammers from exerting an influence by unblocking their own spam.

An impressive 95 per cent success rate is claimed and we wouldn't dispute this. We tested for several weeks with a number of exceptionally spam-prone email accounts and achieved a near perfect detection rate with very few false positives.

Contact:

Cloudmark
A HREF=http://www.cloudmark.com target=_blank>www.cloudmark.com

System requirements:

• Windows 98 or greater
• Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002/XP, 2003 or Outlook Express
• Microsoft Exchange or POP3 email account

Price details:
RRP $3.99 (approx £2.25) monthly subscription; free 30-day trial.