The "Proxy" scenario depicted what we call "on-demand spam filtering". It has significant benefits over the "Checker" scenario, which we will explain here.

The concept of on-demand spam filtering is to emphasis that spam filtering should be as automated and care-free as possible. After installed a spam filter, the user can use her email program as before. The ideal state is that user don't even feel that a spam filter exists!

Traditional spam filters such as SpamKiller, Mailwasher are designed as "checkers". They poll the POP3 server periodically. All messages that are considered spam are first downloaded to the quarantine, then removed from POP3 server. This design is very bad because first if a user checks mail periodically, and the mail program is not syncronized with the spam checker (which is usually the case), the spam checker is of no use at all; second, if a false positive is found, it is a lot trouble to get it back to the user's inbox (usually these spam checkers send false-positives back to the POP server by using SMTP connection). As a result, these spam filters require users to turn off automatic email checker in their mail client, and to user these tools to first confirm that there are no spam on the server, and no legitimate mail are mistakenly quarantined, then start email program to retrieve mail. The whole process is usually more troublesome and time consuming than simply delete spam from inbox!

Anti Spam Proxies, on the contrary, is very easy to use, and imposes virtually no overheads to user's daily email communication. After installed an anti spam proxy, user simply continue to use their favorite email program, without needing to launch a specific spam remover. All operations are streamlined and is transparent to the email program.

Why SpamWeed is the best anti spam product for your POP3 email client?

SpamWeed provide the best transparency to end users. Unlike most other spam proxies, SpamWeed does not add tags to spam and leave the filtering task to your email program. It filters spam out of your inbox. SpamWeed's extremely high detection rate and low false positives also makes it the most trustworthy client side spam filtering product.

The ONLY purpose of a spam filter is to save your time. Currently, only POP3 Proxies can provide true transparency to users. Please don't buy a spam filter because you want to kill the spammers. Think twice how a spam filter can save your time. Read our Pragmatic Anti-Spam Guide.