RedFlameOut’s Musings

I have been using Cloudmark Desktop for several years and have been quite satisfied with it. Cloudmark Desktop is an anti-spam add-in for Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook. It adds a tool bar and automatic processing of incoming email messages.

Messages marked as spam are moved to a user configurable folder. Overall, its is fairly accurate in processing spam but you still need to look in that folder periodically, like any anti-spam software, to verify any false positives. The tool bar includes a block and an unblock button to mark or unmark messages as appropriate.

Unblocked messages are sent back to your default inbox. After you unblock a sender twice, it will ask if you want to always unblock that sender. This is called whitelisting and is quite nicely implemented. If you block a message, it remembers and sends information to their service to build the spam database.

By default, all new messages, even SPAM, are left in the unread state. You can change this through the options.

Installation is fairly easy. Be sure Outlook or Outlook Express is not running when you start the installation process. Once finished, you can start your email program. Cloudmark Desktop will ask you to login because this requires an internet connection to work. A failure dialog box will display if your internet connection is not working. You won’t be able to get your email, turn off the internet connection, and then have it filter spam due to the way it is designed.

The add-in works with what they call collaborative security. Each email message is compared to caught spam in the collaborative security network that Cloudmark Desktop forms. As new spam is caught, the database grows across all the users of the service and more spam is caught in an efficient manner. I do not know what pariticular information they collect and this might be a privacy concern for some people. This information is maintained on Cloudmark servers.

The service rates you based on the qualify of blocks you perform. The fewer non-spam messages you block, the better the rating. The rating is listed in the tool bar. The methods they use to determine if blocks are valid or not is not known nor listed (that I could find) on their web site.

The service is paid for annually and costs $39.95US a year with automatic renewal as an option.

After using it for such a long time, comparatively, I can say it is quite effective — more effective than anything else I have tried except SpamBayes.

Cloudmark also provides services for businesses and a number of ISPs use them.

System Requirements

Operating System:

Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP / Vista 32-bit

Email Software:

Microsoft Outlook 2000 / XP / 2003 / 2007 or
Microsoft Outlook Express 5 / 6

Email Supported:

Cloudmark Desktop works with any type of email account supported by Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express:

• IMAP
• POP3
• SSL POP3
• Microsoft Exchange (Microsoft Outlook only)
• Gmail using SSL POP3
• MSN/Hotmail using HTTP, or Hotmail Plus using POP3 or HTTP
• Yahoo! Mail Plus using POP3

Website: Cloudmark
Download: 15 day free trial

Screen shots:

Toolbar:

My Cloudmark:

Options: