Rating:

11/30/03

Qurb Antispam Software 2.0

Although the federal government is in the process of passing antispam legislation, you shouldn't expect relief soon, if ever. It will take almost two years to implement the legislation, and even then it probably won't help much because it won't stop spam that originates outside of the United States. For the foreseeable future, you will need an antispam tool if you receive a lot of spam (and who doesn't these days).

There are two types of antispam tools: filtering tools and whitelist tools. Filtering tools enable you to set up complex filters (rules) to route spam to your Deleted Items folder. We have tried several of these tools and found them to be largely ineffective, as a clever spammer can find his way around just about any filter you establish. A number of ISP's provide such filtering tools to stop spam at the server, but again, these are largely ineffective. For example, BellSouth FastAccess DSL provides a spam filtering tool called Mailguard (their licensed version of BrightMail). Our experience has been that it only filters out a small percentage of the spam that BellSouth customers receive. The fact is, you can set up a million message rules on your email client, and you can use third party rule-based spam filtering software, but you still won't be able to stop the spam.

Whitelist antispam products (also referred to as a permission-based email management tools), are the only 100% effective spam stoppers. A whitelist application only allows mail from approved senders to enter your Inbox. Messages from unapproved senders are routed to a quarantine folder pending review and approval. Last year, we reviewed one such whitelist application, ChoiceMail (now called ChoiceMail One). Today we review Qurb, another whitelist antispam product.

Qurb is integrated with your email client application, which makes it exceptionally easy to use. Most other whitelist applications are more difficult to use because the user must log on to a the whitelist application to review their quarantined email messages. At present, Qurb only works with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. If you are using another email client, such as Eudora, you cannot use Qurb.

How Qurb Works

During the installation process, Qurb automatically scans your address book and email messages and builds a list of approved senders.

The Qurb installation process automatically adds three buttons to your email client and a new email folder named Qurb. Quarantined messages are automatically routed to this folder when you receive new email.

The Qurb button can be used to view new messages in quarantine, modify the approved senders list, and set options that control Qurb's behavior:

Qurb is integrated seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express

The user can set options that control Qurb's behavior

Qurb's user interface is so easy and intuitive to use that the product does not require any documentation. Basically, you review new quarantined messages from time to time and decide which messages to approve:

If you approve a message, Qurb automatically moves it from the Qurb folder to your Inbox and adds the sender (and any people copied on the message) to your approved senders list.

Qurb will automatically remind you to check your quarantined messages if you forget to do so:

Unapproved messages are automatically deleted after a user-specified period of time. (Qurb does not allow you to set that period to less than seven days.)

Qurb allows you to specify domains from which to accept all messages so that you don't have to approve each user sending you messages from that domain.

When you send a new message, the recipient is automatically added to your approved senders list.

Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express message rules and the blocked senders list are executed before Qurb acts. This comes in handy if, for example, you often receive Paypal payments from strangers and you want to route them to a different folder instead of having to approve them from the quarantined folder.

Qurb Qualms

We have four nits to pick with Qurb.

• We think that Qurb is too aggressive when it automatically builds its list of approved senders when the application is installed. Qurb searches your address book as well as every email message in your email application and adds every email address it finds to the approved senders list. The main problem with this is that it adds hundreds of email addresses that are no longer valid. For example, if you have saved messages from a friend who has had five different email addresses over the years, Qurb will put all five email addresses on the approved senders list. This does not cause any harm (unless you have some spam emails that you have not deleted!), as you will not be receiving email from the old addresses, but if you are a fastidious housekeeper you may wish to delete the invalid email addresses from your approved senders list. We would prefer that during installation, Qurb give you the option of only scanning your address book to build the approved senders list.

• For some reason, spam does not go directly into the Qurb quarantine folder. Spam comes into your Inbox first, remains there for a few seconds, and then is automatically moved to the Qurb folder. You can see the messages appear in your Inbox and disappear before your very eyes. Qurb says that this is because the product is designed to "work within the constraints of integrating with Outlook and Outlook Express."

• If you approve a message in the Qurb folder, it not only adds the sender to your approved senders list - it adds everyone that was included on the sender's distribution list as well. In many cases, you will not know the other people on the sender's distribution list and you may have no desire to receive email from them. You can work around this by manually adding senders to your approval list (instead of approving the message), but this is a time consuming workaround. We think that Qurb should provide an option that allows the user to control this behavior.

• The quarantine folder is named Qurb.  If you have a lot of email folders, you will have to scroll down to see your Qurb folder. (You can also view the new quarantined messages by clicking Qurb/Quarantine.) Unfortunately, you cannot rename this folder or the application will not function properly. We believe that Qurb should allow the user to rename the quarantine folder so that it shows up higher in your list of folders. (Obviously, this wouldn't be a problem if the product were named Curb.)

Qurb vs. ChoiceMail One: Recommendation

ChoiceMail One, the application that we reviewed  last year, supports a larger number of email clients than Qurb. ChoiceMail One supports Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL.

Both Qurb and ChoiceMail One provide the option of challenging unapproved users to explain why they are trying to contact you. ChoiceMail One's challenge functionality is more sophisticated and less easy for a spammer to fool than Qurb's challenge functionality, but we think the point is moot. Rather that burden the sender with a challenge message, we find it easier to just review the quarantined messages in the Qurb folder every so often.

In spite of the aforementioned Qurb Qualms, we believe that Qurb is the whitelist antispam product of choice for users of Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. Its seamless integration with these email clients, ease of use (there's no learning curve here!), and 100% efficacy make it an absolute pleasure to use.

If you use Eudora, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL, we suggest that you try ChoiceMail One, another 100% effective whitelist solution.

Whitelist applications are serious applications for serious spam problems. If you only get a few spam messages a day, a whitelist antispam application is overkill (unless of course the messages are offensive in nature, in which case one message may be too many).

We wish it were a kindler, gentler world, where one did not have to go to such extremes to stop these constant intrusions into our privacy. But it isn't. In fact, while you were sleeping, this woman sent out a few million more spam messages. What she is doing is legal, at least for now. It's also legal to break wind in an elevator, but it still stinks.

We foresee a time in the near future when most people will be using permission based e-mail systems. You can purchase Qurb by clicking on the link below:

 

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