What kind of an age are we living in where spam affects not only our email, but our messaging programs, our IRC chats, and even our shared document programs like Google Documents and Microsoft Exchange?
I suppose this is what our parents felt like the first time they ever received a call from a telemarketer. “You mean junk mail isn’t just for the mailbox anymore?!”
Okay, I’m hamming it up a bit. It’s not the end of the world just because you have to delete a Microsoft Exchange file now and then, but that doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly annoying. So, luckily, there are plenty of great Microsoft Exchange spam filters out there.
If you want some of the absolute best protection available for your MS Exchange server, you’re probably going to have to spend a couple bucks on a full package to deal with spam, as well as adware, malware, viruses, Trojans, and worms, but if you’re already covered with a graet virus scanner, luckily, there are a few good free Microsoft Exchange spam filters available, as well.
The most popular seems to be POPFile. It’s easy to use, it’s simple, it updates regularly, and it works. However, there are some who don’t like the fact that it seems to eat up a lot of memory and CPU space if you get a lot of emails, so you’ll want to couple it up with some simple anti-spam techniques, like perhaps using a dummy account just for joining forums (if you want a surefire way to get your address on a spammer’s list, join a forum).
Another one that seems to get a lot of hits is eXpurgate. eXpurgate isn’t quite as simple to use as POPFile, but it tends to be a little more potent thanks to its configurability. For a spam filter that you configure yourself, though, it is surprisingly easy to use, and it works off a pretty thorough database with a lot of known spam sources. What’s more is that it can also detect and kill viruses.
Now, both of these have been shown to kill around 98% of all spam, or better, but no antispam filter is perfect. Be careful where you post your email address, make sure to run a virus scan now and then, and make sure to use your spam filter and keep it up to date, and you should be covered on all fronts.
