Spam Tools in Outlook

Microsoft Outlook may be all you need

Microsoft Outlook, part of the Microsoft Office suite, is the most popular email program. Windows Mail is the stripped-down free version that is bundled with all versions of Windows Vista. Both include an integrated spam filter.

Outlook and Windows Mail both use a community-based filter called SmartScreen. However, Outlook 2007 has an improved, refined ability to deal with phishing messages. New capabilities include blocking images in suspicious messages from loading (to block image-based spam). Windows Mail doesn't have those features.

Thomas Greene, writing for The Register, says Windows Mail has "half-decent junk mail controls" but awkward-to-use tools. Stephen Manes' report in Forbes calls Windows Mail "a mild reworking of Outlook Express whose big new feature is a spam filter that in my tests flagged non-spam as spam and vice versa an unacceptable 10 percent of the time." About.com's Heinz Tschabitscher calls Windows Mail 6 a "fun and functional email program that keeps you relatively safe with spam and phishing filters."

Outlook receives more favorable reviews for spam control than Windows Mail. Tschabitscher says Outlook 2007 has "solid spam and phishing filters," though he finds it disappointing that it is not possible to train the junk-mail filters.

According to some reviews, if you have Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007, you should definitely try Outlook's spam filtering before investing in a third-party product. One reviewer says it is all you need: detection rates are excellent and false positives are rare. The reviewer also says it's easy to set up and use. If you are dissatisfied with Outlook's filtering or you use a different email program, consider the options discussed next.