Customer Reviews

SpamKiller 5.0

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

This program is just about the most useless one I have ever owned. First of all, don't bother if you use MAPI, or have more than one POP3 account in Outlook, or if your SMTP server requires authentication, or you have any other installation that varies from using just one standard POP3 account in Outlook Express. On my POP3 accounts, this thing made it so that I could not send without being prompted for my password, because my server requires authentication. There's a place in the program to enter this information, but I can't see why, because you are never told to send through it, only receive. Plus, it tagged almost EVERYTHING as spam, so what's the point? When I tried in a corporate setting, with Exchange Server and Outlook, it did absolutely nothing. It saw my acccount, said it was functioning correctly, then proceeded to not block ANYTHING. It didn't even see any email, spam or otherwise. Attempts to manually stamp something as spam always failed. The final straw that makes this program the most useless is the lack of support. Unless you like paying more than twice the cost of the software itself for phone support. The online help is nothing more than a reprint of the in-program help, which is just an electronic version of the useless manual. None of them really explains anything. Now I remember why I always pay a few bucks extra for Norton products.

First, it does not integrate with Outlook unless you have an active MAPI account, which is funny because it advertises integration with Outlook, but in the set up it mentions most people have POP3 accounts, which is true, so for most people it does not integrate with Outlook!

Second, it installs this useless "Security Center" (aka Ad Center) which you can't uninstall unless you uninstall Spamkiller! Security Center just tells you what you already know (what security programs you have installed) and pushes Mcafee products by saying "well, if you had mcafee antivirus....blah blah...." I have Norton Antivirus leave me alone!

Also, I hear support is a joke so I haven't even tried. I regret buying this and of course, will avoid Mcafee products from now on.

This a very poorly designed software package. I have been using a free/shareware program <http://www.mailwasher.net> and thought while I was purchasing an upgrade to my virus protection I would get a SPAM filter as well and check it out.
I have used VirusScan for years and it has worked fine, though I think this new version is a step back.
By default SpamKiller puts all your e-mail into a SPAM folder with no simple way to sort out what is acceptable and unacceptable.
It just looks like a mess with your real e-mail in with the SPAM. I think whoever did the user acceptance of this should be moved to another department.
The program seems like it will do a lot, but it does not do the basics well. For example my freeware program is set to check e-mail every ten minutes and it always had e-mail in it that SpamKiller did not have set for the same time interval. It is just slow and clunky.
This a case where less is more.
With mailwasher you have to take the time to blacklist & white list addresses & domains, but it least it gives the that control in an easy interface.
I am not touting this little program I just happen to find a few years back, which is free/shareware, it would seem to me if Mcaffe is charging $40.00 for SpamKiller and other software is out there for free or very little that does the job with understanding there is no technical support (versus the illusion that Mcaffe has it).
Why buy this product?
Forget the rebate it is a joke. It is a sales pitch to get you to buy and then when you read the fine print you won't get any money.

As a dedicated McAfee user, I was excited about the SpamKiller release. It took very little time to get over it. Others complain about it's use with Outlook and I must add that it is just as lousy with Eudora.

The most frustrating part is having to go through each spam email, one-by-one, request to delete it, then confirm I want to delete it. In my Eudora Inbox, I can easily recognize 98% of Spam and use my shift key to delete several spams at once. The "Select more than one" Shift and/or Cntl keys don't function in the SpamKiller filter, so you have to delete each email one-by-one

-OR-

You could leave spam in the filter and let the filter delete it. The problem is.. If You receive large quantities of spam, then your filter gets sooooo full, you can hardly find friendly emails that get marked as spam. If you set a very small window for deletion ("Delete spam in 1 day"), and you ever miss a day - you will loose legitimate emails you want.

For someone who receives legitimate emails from strangers, using the "friends" feature is pointless.. I have new "friends" all the time.. Which always (so far) get tagged as Spam. If I change the filter options to not mark certain email types as spam, it seems to decide nothing is spam and I get a box full of it! The filters are fickle too.. I've had them stop blocking anything, only to start in again, and I've had trouble even getting my mail at all since installing SpamKiller. I can turn SpamKiller off, and get hords of junk emails even though I had just checked my mail and got nothing.

This program is a grave disappointment. Don't buy it (yet).. Wait for a better version or buy something else. I'm going to uninstall it.. It's cumbersome, clugey, and unhelpful!

You pick the real name.
What it is - A filter based layer that sits between your email client and email server. While you can create/modify your own rules, the real benefit to most users is the downloaded set of rules that McAfee maintains and updates. The white list capability allows you to specify friends whose mail should not be filtered, regardless of content. It integrates with Outlook Express fairly well, picking up the accounts during installation and providing a toolbar for one stop usage.

What it might be - While the feature list speaks of probability heuristics and learning capability, there is no mention of Bayesian filtering (given that this is one of the hot topics in spam filtering, you would assume that if they had it they would slap that label all over the place if it was included), nor are there the usual controls associated with tweaking the settings that usually accompanies a Bayes style filtering scheme. [See SpamBayes for an open source Bayesian Outlook pluggin]

What it is not - Unless you are running a very basic email setup, this is not a plug and play piece of code. I use Outlook for my Pop3 accounts (not Outlook Express) in a home environment. The install program failed to find any of the multiple email accounts setup in Outlook, so I had to add those manually including altering the properties for the accounts. The claims that SpamKiller integrates with Outlook apply to large scale users with an Exchange Server and MAPI accounts, not home users with Pop3 accounts; home users do not get the nice little toolbar and need to use both the SpamKiller client and email client to process email.

Bottom line - For the unsophisticated home user with Outlook Express as their email client, that does not want to be bothered with the myriad of rules necessary to block spam, this is probably a good buy. For the corporate group with a full Exchange setup trying to block unwanted spam, this might be a good choice. For the lonely home user with a little more sophistication running something other than the above, you might get some benefit, but it will cost you some time and frustration puzzling over the setup and missing features. For the time being, I am returning to my Bayesian filter. P-)

I paid my money and I took my chances. I already had Spamkiller 4, which stopped about 80% of the spam, and wanted to upgrade to version 5. Very disappointing. I downloaded the program, but couldn't get it to register with the company, until finally I disabled my firewall and Ad/Subtract (anti pop-up) programs. Finally it registered, but upon turning on my computer, I was notified that Spamkiller was NOT protecting my computer. And, sure enough, it wasn't. I tried everything I could think of. Nada! It stopped nothing, and I got over 200 spam messages in a few hours.

Also, I was directed to change my server settings to "localhost" for incoming mail, and my e-mail address for outgoing. My server would not accept those settings. Not only was the spam stopped, but all of my e-mail, incoming and outgoing!

Finally, after two or three days of frustration, i decided to take my lumps (40 dollars), and go to Norton, which I should have done in the first place. I've had (and dropped) McAfee's antivirus program in the past, in favor of Norton's, and I'm also running Norton's firewall and have been happy with them--especially their automatic updates and, unlike McAfee, they don't hit you up for more money seemingly every other day!

Norton's program loaded quickly and easily, registered with no problem, and is now up and running. So far it is stopping virtually all spam.

These two--Norton and McAfee--are reputed to be the leading anti virus programs, as well as anti spam programs. Of the two, based on my own experience, I prefer the former. One of the big failures of McAfee is their failure to provide an up-front e-mail address where you can contact them for support. They do provide a phone number, but they want something like a buck-and-a-half a minute. I don't know whether that includes a ten-minute wait, filled with elevator music, or not.

Another reasonably good anti-spam program, which I tried briefly before going to Spamkiller 4, was one called "I Hate Spam." Neither of them allowed you to block a given spammer with a single key-stroke, however.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre<

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books.

This does kill SPAM and it works well at that, including HOTMAIL SPAM, which I don't think anybody else does.

However, the program always runs in the background, and often takes 80% of your system memory and resources. Meaning, just about anything you perform on your system other than killing SPAM is very slow. If you're working with Outlook, things get even slower. When you first install it on an XP system, you get all kinds of errors when the program runs, which the website does not address. These go away with the first program update.

Most of all, to use the program, you get the dreaded McAfee Security Center. With this wonderful piece of what may or may not be Spyware, you have to provide details about yourself and register. You also get "reminders" of their other products, and worst of all...SPAM from McAfee - which you then can at least block. At least Symantec does not force their other offerings on you.

The actual software isn't all that bad, it manages to get about 20% of the SPAM - it is easily spoofed by even the the casual spammer. It does however, really seem to like letters from folks I want mail from (like relatives). It puts those in the kill box at the drop of a hat. Fortunately you can still rescue them.

The worst part is the lack of support, unless you want to pay $2.95 a minute. Can you spell "Chislers"? Take my advice stick with Symantec products or Zone Alarm.

After three installs and uninstalls of this program, I've had it. Spam still gets thru, Outlook locks-up, same problems over and over. SpamKiller should be put to sleep.

My subscription ran out on 4.0 so I went an purchased 5.0.
After installation what I learned is this: they completely redesigned and destroyed a perfectly excellent product,and it won't run smoothly unless you are running a Pentium 4 machine. As far as I'm concerned this was the only product I liked from their product line and now they've just killed it.