Spam is the nickname given to Unsolicited Commercial Email.  That is, email which you never asked for and which you almost always do not want to receive.  It is the computer equivalent of Junk Mail.

Spam can sometimes account for the majority of email arriving into an organisation.  At the Telematics Centre some 80 % of email received in the past year was classified as Spam.  Sometimes the percentage is even worse!

Most people just want to get rid of Spam, leaving them to read their real email.  The problem is that there is a very large "grey area" of messages where it is not always clear that the message is Spam and the message could be a reall email.  This problem is known as "false positives" where an AntiSpam program is in danger of classifying a real message as Spam and subsequently deleting it.

A number of Internet Security software suites contain an AntiSpam module.  For a new installation on a small number of computers this can often be an effective solution.

For computers which are part of a managed network already having antivirus software then an add-on solution is required.  For computers using Microsoft Outlook as email client and downloading mail by POP3, our recommended product is:

• CloudMark Desktop AntiSpam

For computers which are part of a managed network which uses Microsoft Exchange to deliver email, recommended solutions include:

• Microsoft Intelligent Message Filter
• Symantec Premium AntiSpam

The Microsoft Intelligent Message Filter is a free tool provided by Microsoft for Exchange.  It is much less effective in our experience than a paid-for product such as Symantec Premium AntiSpam.  The latter is licensed on an annual subscription basis and is available with charity pricing.