Labs

Kaspersky's security software bundle includes a top-class anti-virus program, a good firewall and an anti-spam utility. Previous incarnations of Kaspersky's anti-spam software have been disappointing compared to the competition. This version contains new features that promise to make detecting spam more accurate.

There are some impressive-looking features, such as an automatic whitelist

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that monitors the email you send and adds the recipients' addresses without you having to bother. The Spam Recognition Filters also sound good, with image and header recognition features. You can even finetune the system by assigning your own weighted values for different email characteristics. For example, if a message has no text but only an embedded image, you can give this a percentage rating.

However, in our tests the anti-spam detection rates were not great. In fact, they were the worst we've seen for a long time. It missed 80 per cent of the spam, while its nearest competitor was the free SpamPal, which missed 47 per cent. Kaspersky Internet Security 6 also dumped 50 per cent of our real mail, classifying it as spam.

The anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall features in this suite are excellent and well worth the money on their own. The anti-spam part can be disabled, although technically minded users should be able to train it to make it more accurate.