InboxShield 

Despite numerous calls from far flung parts of Europe their technical support only spent time and money their product now rendered my PC unusable, and worst of all when I went back to my old version (System Restore works in Safe Mode) it has changed my licensed version into a 30 day trial. As I said InboxShield arrived just at the right time.

This is version 3 (I have not seen any of the earlier versions) and once the initial install is done it asks to check for later versions it finds one and installs it.

During the installation you are prompted and I doubt anyone could unintentionally make a wrong choice. If you have an address book it will add contacts to a ‘buddies’ list so those emails automatically arrive in your Inbox. It does state that in the first week it is likely to make mistakes. Anything from a mass list will automatically go to the Quarantine folder (it creates under the Inbox) do check this with your Inbox for the first week or so as it will undoubtedly put some required – and requested – emails into it, however just click ‘Is Not Spam’ button on the InboxShield toolbar and the message will be sent directly to your Inbox, it is unlikely to make the same mistake again.

Should some unrequired messages arrive in your Inbox then click on ‘Is Spam’ button and then any future messages from that sender will go to the Quarantine folder. So far this is fairly standard however it creates a further sub folder called ‘Potential Frauds’ so far this has gathered only three emails – I get around 60 messages a day - and I certainly agree with it’s conclusions. Of course should you disagree tell it and future emails from that address would be delivered normally.

There are a total of eight items on the toolbar including an ‘Add To Enemies’ item and a ‘Scan Folder’ item, I tried the latter on my Inbox that has quite a lot of entries, it takes a few minutes but afterwards a number of messages were in the ‘Quarantine’ folder – thankfully none in the ‘Potential Frauds’ and these I went though again and the genuine ones were restored via the ‘Is Not Spam’ icon. This helps the training and means by the second week almost everything in the ‘Quarantine’ folder deserves to be there.

This seems to me – after two weeks use – to be a vast improvement on my previous product where I was left to set up rules myself something that is always likely to fail.

The stated price is £19.95 hardly a fortune, as it seems to check for upgrades on installation you should keep up to date. I was particularly impressed with the ‘Potential Fraud’ folder and while it may not always be correct far better to be aware of it’s opinion. It makes the claim that it will ultimately filter out 98% of spam.

Link : www.guildsoft.co.uk go to products scroll to Edovia InboxShield