Stopping Spam at the desktop

Today I found an Outlook add-on that filters spam by sharing spam "signatures" with other users of the application. Spamnet comes from Cloudmark and so far so good.

It installed easily, added a few buttons and created a new folder called "Spam". As messages are received, Spamnet compare the messages with it's list of messages identified by other users. Matches are moved to the Spam folder for verification.

This works because a quarter million users are all personally identifying spam. This isn't a keyword trick or an ISP black list, but a collaborative identification system. Receive a spam that wasn't filtered, just click the Block button and a mathematical signature of the message is generated and distributed to other Spamnet users. How clever!

I receive hundreds of spams per day courtesy of 2 primary email accounts that I've had for years. So, this could be the most important email tool of the decade for me. I'll post updates here of my experience.