Labs

McAfee has stopped selling its SpamKiller anti-spam utility on its own and has integrated it into its new, most expensive security package. This also includes anti-virus and firewall software, plus a selection of other less critical utilities and services. Past versions of McAfee's anti-virus and firewall software proved perfectly acceptable in our tests, but SpamKiller has been problematic on a number of levels.

McAfee recently told us it acknowledges

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SpamKiller's past problems and has vastly improved the software. It looks better and works in a different way, tagging suspected spam messages rather than storing them in a separate database away from the email program.

There is a good range of anti-spam settings, including a simple slider that sets the aggression level of the spam detector. If you want to set the system to distrust different character sets, or be suspicious of messages that have lots of images and little text, you can do so easily.

Spam detection rates were pretty good. With no training it managed to detect 85 per cent of our spam, placing it in the top three programs tested here, beaten only by Cloudmark Desktop and Trend Micro PC-cillin. However, it sent 30 per cent of real messages to the spam folder, too.

If you want to use SpamKiller, you need to buy one of McAfee's most expensive security suites. Its price is high compared to similar rival packages and the anti-spam detection isn't good enough to warrant spending this extra cash.