Labs

The previous release of SpamCatcher, version 3, was very accurate but a little harder to set up than the competition. SpamCatcher 4 is much easier to install and get running with Outlook as you don't have to change your email account settings to funnel messages through the spam filter. SpamCatcher does the business for you automatically, as do most of the other programs here, with the notable exception of SpamPal.

Other developments have not been as positive. In our test, using default settings, SpamCatcher filtered out only 17 per cent of our spam. At least it only thought

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one real message was unsolicited, and that happened to be an advert anyway. This overall level of accuracy puts SpamCatcher in the middle of the products tested here.

SpamCatcher can be set up and configured separately from Outlook, but it also integrates nicely so you can use the toolbar in Outlook and click buttons to allow or blacklist messages.

There are plenty of options available to tune things up, and you can tinker around and improve the program's accuracy dramatically. There are more options here than with any other program on test, although the number of tick boxes might be overwhelming to some people.

If you want to link SpamCatcher to public email server blacklists you are in luck, because it supports SpamCop as well as a handful of others. These systems monitor who is sending spam and inform SpamCatcher so it can make better guesses about which messages will be real and which will be adverts.

SpamCatcher 4 is not too expensive, takes up very little disk space and its annual renewal price of £5.50 is very reasonable. But it can't compete with more friendly, accurate and cheaper options such as Norton AntiSpam 2005.