Cactus Spam Filter is a free easy-to-use spam blocker. It protects your inbox by learning to detect spam as it's being used. After a short while it has adapted to your personal mailbox and blocks out most of the junk e-mail. Since the filter becomes personal, spammers will not be able to fool it.
Even though this is a brutal, merciless spam killer, no e-mails will get lost unless you delete them. Installation is very simple. No setup is required in your e-mail client; this spam stopper integrates seamlessly with all e-mail clients that use POP3. It has been successfully tested with Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Eudora, IncrediMail, Pegasus Mail, Foxmail and Phoenix Mail.
Spam, or unsolicited e-mail costs companies millions of dollars daily. Recent studies indicate that 60% of all e-mails are spam. Home users spend hour after hour looking through the inbox separating spam from legitimate e-mails. Cactus Spam Filter will efficiently filter spam e-mail by tagging their subject line. The user can easily setup the e-mail client to automatically move such messages into a junk folder or directly to the recycle bin.
This anti-spam program learns to detect spam as it's being used, and believe me, Cactus Spam Filter is a fast learner. After a few e-mails it will start to make its own decisions to relieve you from the spam burden.
One of the unique features of Cactus Spam Filter is the ease of use. After you have downloaded and installed it no more settings are required! No account setup, no POP proxies, nothing! Just start your favorite e-mail program and Cactus Spam Filter will instantly protect it!
Cactus Spam Filter is compatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Just double-click on the downloaded .exe file and follow the instructions.
Shutdown Cactus Spam Filter and uninstall it through 'Add/Remove Programs' under the Control Panel.
Start it from the Windows Start menu.
Cactus Spam Filter has been setup to protect all major e-mail programs, however, if you are using an e-mail client that is not in the list, you will have to add it. Do this by pressing the 'Add' button under the 'Settings' page. Browse and select the .exe file.
E-mail classified as spam will get a tagged subject, this means that a string (*** CACTUS SPAM ***) will be inserted into the subject line of the e- mail. You can easily set your e-mail client move all incoming spam messages to a special folder. See the e-mail client manual for more details, look for topics on 'Message Rules' or 'Message Filter', or visit our homepage for instructions.
Cactus Spam Filter offers a feature that will train your filter quickly, instead of having to wait for new e-mails. If you already have a bunch of good and spam e-mails, you can directly train the filter with these e-mails. Here is a step-by-step procedure to do this.
1. If Cactus Spam Filter isn't running, start it.
2. Click on the 'Training' link in the top menu.
3. Click on the 'Training Folder' link to open the folder where e-mails are trained on.
4. Open your e-mail program and export all of your e-mails into this folder. If you are unsure of how to do this, please see our homepage.
5. Now click on the 'Training Arena' link and train the filter on the e-mails.
If the filter accidentally classifies a spam message as a legitimate e-mail, or worse, a legitimate as a spam, it is important to training the filter on those misclassified e-mails. To do this, enter the 'Training Arena', find the misclassified e-mails and train them correctly. If you can't find the messages in the list, please see 4.3 of how to move them there form your e-mail client.
| What's wrong | Resolution |
|---|---|
| Spam detection is low. | If the filter has been trained for a while, but doesn't detect many spam, you may have to change the spam cutoff value. You do this in the 'Training Arena'. Try to lower the spam cutoff probability. A common reason for this problem is when the filter is trained on much more spam than good e-mails (e.g. 100 good and 2000 spam). If this is the case try to train it on more good e-mails as well. |
| Too many good e-mails are classified as spam. | Try to increase the spam cutoff probability in the 'Training Arena'. |
| Spam detection is low and good e-mails are classified as spam. | If you have trained to filter on less than 75 good and 75 spam emails you should wait. However, if you have trained the filter on more e-mails a reason for this could be noise in the training data. The solution is to retrain the filter and make sure that all e-mails trains as spam are actual spam and all good are good e-mails. |
At first, the filter will have no knowledge of what's spam and what's not spam, and it will learn from your guidance. After a while the filter has developed and will start to make its own decisions.
We hope that you are satisfied with Cactus Spam Filter, please don't hesitate to contact us with your comments!
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