Spam! spam! spam! spam! . . . if it had not been for Monty Python nobody would ever have thought there was anything funny about it. With almost 50 percent of the world's email now junk mail, offering everything from unwanted penis extensions to stockmarket tips, spam has become as big a problem as viruses.
The fact that the recent Sobig.F virus was designed as a spam generator emphasises the size of the problem. The world has been crying out for a decent spam filter and now it may finally have it.
Symantec's new Norton Anti Spam is an essential part of its 2004 Internet Security suite and one of its most important developments since the original Norton Anti Virus. While anti-spam programs are a dime a dozen, few of them are truly effective, however, over a trial period of a week, NAS intercepted more than 400 spam emails, letting only eight through and giving only one false reading - an accuracy rate of 98 percent.
Those it did let through were then manually identified as spam and the source address automatically added to the NAS block list.
Anti Spam tags suspected spam and sends it directly to a special folder in your email program, however, it will not override message rules you have already created and if you are using Outlook Express you can configure NAS to delete spam automatically rather than store it in the NAS folder.
Once an email has been confirmed as spam its source address is automatically added to Outlook Express's Blocked Sender lists.
NAS uses a combination of known spam sources, heuristic detection and subject line keywords to identify spam and, like Norton Anti Virus, Symantec provides spam definition updates through its Live Update service.
Apart from the addition of Anti-Spam, Norton Internet Security, includes the traditional Personal Firewall, Anti Virus, Privacy Control and Ad Blocking.
Personal Firewall has undergone several improvements and now automatically configures itself during the initial set up, setting basic rules for all of the applications on your computer without the need for any input from the user. This eliminates much of the confusion suffered by the average home PC owner who knows they need a firewall but has no idea how to configure it. While they will still occasionally be asked to set new rules, the terminology has been simplified and they are given a recommended option that just requires them to click OK.
Power users can still manually configure their firewall, but they too will notice some improvements with a new, simplified interface and activity logs. The annoying 'tracker' icon from the 2003 version that would appear whenever anything slightly suspicious occurred has been removed and the firewall now just gets on and does its job with the least possible input from the user.
A new network detector tool has been added that simplifies network connections, particularly for road warriors connecting to a variety of wireless networks. It detects the presence of a new network and then provides a network wizard that will configure the connection to give you the best possible protection.
Privacy Control is the only part of the suite that has not be changed. You can still set up accounts for different users and configure it to block private information such as home address, bank account and credit card details, email addresses and so on from being sent out over the Internet, chat programs or email.
The Anti Virus engine has been given a boost and now will also seek and destroy spyware, keystroke logging programs, adware and other hacking tools, and scans compressed file archives in Windows XP and 2000 before they are opened. For some inexplicable reason, in previous versions users were required to turn Live Update on, however, commonsense has prevailed and it is now turned on as the default setting so that new virus definitions are automatically downloaded as they become available.
Email and instant messenger scanning are also now on by default.
All of this takes up resources particularly during boot up and as a result boot times suffer, however, it is small price to pay for the type of protection being provided.
In the past, Symantec has been a prime target for counterfeiters so it was inevitable that it would join the growing number of developers to require product activation for its 2004 software.
While you now have to activate any 2004 Symantec product each time you install it, users are allowed five activations before they are blocked and have to contact the company.
Overall, this is one helluva set and forget package. If everyone had one like it installed on their PC, spammers, viruses writers and hackers wouldn't be anywhere near the problem they are today.