EmailProtect 1.8 |
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Product: Email Protect 1.8
Vendor: Content Watch
Price: $29.99
Editor Rating: 3 stars
Pros
+ "Behind the scenes" integration with your email client - no buttons or menus.
+ Better protection than most
Cons
- Leaves "blocked" messages in your inbox
- Tends to block opt-in newsletters
Review
We test each spam filter by first sending 100 spam emails to a test account with the spam filter installed. If necessary, we then train the product, typically by pressing a button marking the email as spam. After the training process is complete, we then send a different set of spam emails to the same account to determine the overall effectiveness of the product.
If applicable, we tested each spam filter on Outlook Express, Eudora, and Yahoo.
Installation
Installation proceeded without a hitch, but Email Protect forced us to enter an email address in order to get a trial key.
Usability
EmailProtect does not integrate into your email client. Instead, it runs in the system background and monitors incoming email. When it finds spam, it replaces it with an email indicating that it has blocked the message. You then need to open up the Email Protect interface to read it. While this approach does work, your inbox is still cluttered with blocked messages. If you purchase this program, we suggest that you set up a rule to move blocked spam into a separate folder (and we hope that Content Watch builds this functionality into the next version of their software).
Training
Of the 96 spam and 4 legitimate emails, EmailProtect blocked 60 and allowed the 4 legitimate emails (62% accuracy). 3 of the legitimate emails were passed - the one which was blocked was an opt-in newsletter.
No training options are available, so we then proceeded to filter an additional 291 spam and 15 legitimate emails, again allowing the program to run overnight. EmailProtect blocked 210 of them (72% accuracy). 84 spam made it through, but aside from a few opt-in newsletters, our legitimate email made it through. Overall, EmailProtect did a decent job.
Other Features
EmailProtect has an interesting feature called "category blocking", which allows you to pass or block spam emails in different categories (we did not test this feature to determine its effectiveness). It can also block specific email addresses or emails with forbidden words.
Like most of the products we tested, EmailProtect did not include any reporting functionality.
Summary
EmailProtect provides reasonable protection against spam and has more functionality than most products.
Price: $29.99
Free Trial: YES
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