Welcome to SpamHelp

The belief that spam emails (a.k.a junk mail) pose a genuine threat to the overall usefulness of e-mail communication is quickly gaining widespread acceptance. With the accelerated growth in the volume of spam emails being sent every year, now accounting for over 80% of all email traffic, spam has become a problem that governments, businesses and the public in general can no longer ignore. But the fight to control spam is an ongoing struggle with spammers constantly devising new methods and tricks to get their unsolicited messages to the widest audience possible. As a result, technology and legislation is constantly evolving to meet these new challenges, and likewise, here at SpamHelp, we are committed to building a resource that evolves to reflect the changes in the war against spam.

We intend to take a look at all the different angles related to controlling spam. As a home user, what steps can be taken to limit the volume of spam that I receive? As a network administrator, what steps can I take to control the volume of spam hitting my mail servers and entering the network? What spam filtering software is available to control spam at the desktop? What server-based antispam software is available? What are governments doing to discourage spamming? The answers to all these questions and more will be found here on SpamHelp. We hope the information provided within these pages will prove useful and practical in your efforts to fight spam. Enjoy your stay and please remember to visit us on a regular basis to keep up with all the latest developments.

Anti-Spam News

Site News

3 May 2008 - Happy(?!) birthday to e-mail spam! Today, spam is 30 years old, with the first spam e-mail sent by Gary Theurk, an employee at Digital Equipment Company (which was purchased by Compaq and later HP), to 393 Arpanet users. More info

9 April 2008 - InfoWorld have carried out comprehensive reviews and comparisons between anti-spam appliances. The full article may be read here. If you're only interested about the results chart, you may check it out here.

16 May 2005 - A new "Q" variant of the two-year-old Sober worm is responsible for a large amount of spam emails in the German language containing neo-Nazi propoganda. Sober.q itself is not a worm: "There's no binary attachment. Machines infected by Sober.p are downloading the code that's necessary to execute this most recent Trojan." said Sam Masiello, the director of threat management for Denver-based MX Logic.

17 March 2005 - Added a new section, humor with a feed from Spamusement!

6 October 2004 - We've launched a new services category for those who prefer a hosted anti-spam solution. The industry name for this solution is managed anti-spam.

19 September 2004 - Do you need a server-based antispam package but can't figure out which one is best for you? Then check out the SpamHelp AntiSpam Feature Comparison! Just specify the features you prefer and let our comparison do the rest.

16 August 2004 - Our SMTP open relay tester has now come out of BETA. It can be found here. It also has the ability to report to DSBL (Distributed Server Boycott List), a blacklist.

20 February 2004 - Last month we opened up the events section, and we're now covering several areas related to spam. We'd like to hear from you regarding which areas you're mostly interested in, and anything else that we haven't yet covered. Send us an email!

20 October 2003 - A submission form has been made for developers who would like to submit their products to any of our sections.

5 October 2003 - The services section has been split up into two categories - disposable email services and challenge/resonse services for your convenience. More categories and listings will be up soon.

1 October 2003 - An appliances section has been added to the site, featuring listings of anti-spam hardware solutions.

30 September 2003 - We've brought some useful tools together to help in the war against spam. Check out the new Network Tools section!

23 September 2003 - Launched a new tool - Harvester Killer. This page shows a hundred randomly generated email addresses. Email harvesters will store all of these emails in a DB, and following the link at the bottom of the page, filling them up with more invalid email addresses. They eventually end up in an infinite loop. Help fight spam yourself by linking to this page!

22 September 2003 - The articles section is finally open. We've put up two great articles by the Federal Trade Commission and the CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY & TECHNOLOGY. Check them out here.

14 September 2003 - We have added functionality that enables us to have different categories for listings. For now, we have splitted up the software section into client-side software and server-side software.

6 September 2003 - The services section is now up and running, database driven. We will be working on allowing comments and voting, sorting, searching and of course a submission form.
If you run a website and think that our content is good, then we would appreciate it if you could link to us. We have provided a page with different links you can use. Check it out!

Anti-Spam Software

• Client-based anti spam software - software spam filters that reside on your own computer, performing spam filtering as you receive it. Such software may be available as a stand-alone product that filters mail before reaching the email client or as an add-on that integrates with your email client.
• Server-based anti spam software - anti-spam software solutions that are installed either on the mail server itself or in front of the mail server. Therefore gateway based anti-spam solutions are also included in this section. Such solutions normally perform spam identification and filtering before legitimate emails are distributed to the intended recipients throughout the network. Click here for our customisable feature comparison!

Latest Software Listings