messagehammer is a spam blocking software... I want to learn about
competeing products?

Hi Rodgerthat-ga: 

    I'm slightly biased.  I personally use a tool called Spamassassin,
which the folks at Stata labs have ported to Windows.   SpamAssassin,
roughly is a rule-based filtering system.   With a good degree of
accuracy (I'd say around 90%)  it 'rates' messages based on a few key
criterion (e.g., ALLCAPS, or 'viagra' in the body line).  The Stata
labs folks have made a program that encorporates those rules and works
in most major mail clients.   The documentation is pretty clean, and
it works (at least for me).   Best of all, the proxy is small, and
free.

http://www.bloomba.com/download.html

     A really big spam blocker is Mailwasher
(http://www.mailwasher.net/).  I haven't personally used this, but I
know quite a few folks who find this program effective.  This is a
program that also seems to act as a proxy -- your mail gets downloaded
into the Mailwasher client, and within the Mailwasher interface, you
have the option to 'delete' or -- and I think this is kinda neat --
send a 'bounce' message to the spammer -- faking the spammer into
believing that your mail address is bogus.   Mailwasher has a nice
'Status' screen that helps you identify those messages that might be,
or possibly are spam.   And it allows you to only download those
messages you find appealing.  Mailwasher is shareware, and costs $20.

     Thirdly, there's Spambuster, a program that touts filters for
over 15,000 known spammers.  It works by checking your email against a
'blacklist' of known spammers, and deletes the mail message before it
ever gets to your inbox.  This program allows configurability for up
to 12 different emailboxes.   Like Mailwashers, this is free to try,
but its ad-ware.  You can get rid of the ads for $19.95.
http://www.contactplus.com/

     Finally, (and I picked this because of the name ;-))  there is
IHateSpam, a program that runs quietly in the background and notifies
you with a popup when a message matches the filter string of known
spammers.  This program runs inside outlook and Outlook Express, and
doesn't require you to run another interface to check your messages.  
Also, IHateSpam will automatically update itself to add new
blacklisted emails, which allows you to be on top of the latest
spam-changes.   This program is free to try, $20 to buy. 
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=930

Hope this helps!

Bitmaven-GA

Search terms: 

Spam blockers -- Or better yet, just go here: 
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,4936,00.asp

(PC world has a nice breakdown of many spam blockers). 





    To be fair, and unbiased I'll give you a few other options:

---

Clarification of Answer by bitmaven-ga on 21 May 2003 18:18 PDT

Ignore that last little tag at the end.  *sigh*  I hate it when things
go off-screen.

Bitmaven-ga

Just to add a perspective from someone who has personal experience of
both Mailwasher and SpamAssassin -- Mailwasher is a fine product for
someone who receives a small amount of Spam (let's say, less than 50
Spam per day), but   SpamAssassin is a much better product for someone
who is receiving high volumes of Spam.

I started with Mailwasher about a year ago, back when it was freeware.
 Mailwasher is indeed very easy to use.  Its "Status Screen" (where
you preview your incoming mail) has a clean and simple design.  It is
easy to see how Mailwashwer has categorized your incoming mail
(Friend, Email, Possible Spam, Probably Spam, Blacklist).  It is also
easy to tick individual emails so that the sender is added to your
Friends list or your Blacklist.  Finally, Mailwasher makes it easy for
you to set up additional filters of your own design.

So what's the problem?  Once you start receiving a high volume of
Spam, the act of going through your Status List of incoming email is
both physically and emotionally draining.  Physically draining because
you must take some sort of keyboard action on many of the emails, and
emotionally draining because you see the titles of all that trash.  (I
at least have had it with "real rape scenes" and "barnyard sex".)

SpamAssassin takes all your suspected Spam and segregates it into a
Spam folder.  You don't see it unless you go and look for it.  In my
experience, SpamAssassin has had no false positives.  It does let
through about 20 Spam per day for me, but as I am currently running
about 400 Spam per day, that's very good.  I empty my Spam folder each
night, but I no longer review to see what's in there.  I just trash it
all.

pocoloco-ga

(Why am I pocoloco?  'cause of all the Spam I have seen.)         

search strategy:
no search in this case - just commentary based on personal experience