Several weeks ago I did a first-look post on an application called SidewinderX.¬† SidewinderX is a SPAM tracing and reporting tool for Apple OS X from Hendrickson Software Components (hsc).¬† I reported in this past post that I was going to report SPAM email from a junk account for several weeks to see if I could discern any reduction or difference in the volume of SPAM it received. As a normal work practice I usually have one email account that I use for “junk”¬† and it was this account I used as a trial account.¬† I kept count of SPAM messages received and reported for a period of four weeks.

The data from my SidewinderX trial is represented in the bar chart below.  For the first couple of weeks I report any email that I considered unsolicited. There were a few newsletters and such that I knew I had subscribed to so I manually unsubscribed from these.  By the third week of using SidewinderX, I was reporting almost all remaining email as SPAM. 

As you can see in the chart below, in three weeks of use I experienced about a 50% reduction in junk/SPAM email being sent to this email account. These results far exceeded my expectations. I didn’t expect to see any noticeable difference.

It’s not all free.¬† This is some time involved. I daily went through emails in my junk email folder and selected the messages I wanted to report. I then executed a SidewinderX applescript that processed these selected emails.¬† There’s also an applescript to process “all” emails in your Apple Mail junk folder but this method didn’t fit my normal email usage process.

During these three trial weeks I received a number of feedback reports from ISP’s that I’d reported spam abuse to.¬† In many cases they indicated that the offending spam accounts had been closed.¬† In other cases they indicated that they were taking the appropriated actions.

200612081220

I’ve been impressed with my results from using SidewinderX.¬† I cannot guarantee that everyone will experience the same success but I do feel that the product is doing a decent job of tracing and reporting spam to the involved originators and ISP’s.¬† Just remember that you have to put in the effort to report the SPAM to see any results.¬† There have also been several updates to the product during my testing period that have improved the tools performance and operation.

Recommended: 

Technorati Tags: email, OS X, apple mail, review, sidewinderx, spam