1. Install Spamnix, this anti-spam tool comes as a free trial and doesn't cost much to buy
2. Make sure that images in spam e-mails are never shown, most of them are linked with information about who you are - if you open them, they will give you away and verify your e-mail address. You can fix this in a couple of ways:
   1. Disable preview of e-mails by going to Tools -> Options ->Viewing Mail -> Preview Pane and un checking "Show messages in preview pane" While you are in that window, I would also recommend un checking the "Use Microsoft's viewer" in the Message Window part of the screen. That will make you safer against viruses.
   2. Go to Tools -> Options -> Display and un check the "Automatically download HTML graphics" This is a move I highly recommend! - It will stop Eudora from downloading images included in formatted e-mail, thereby making it impossible for spammers to use images to verify e-mail addresses.

BTW: If you don't have it already, Eudora is available for download at Eudora.com, and comes as a light version (no ads, fewer functions), sponsored version (free with all functionality available, but with ads), and as a for-pay version with all the features and none of the ads. They even have an Internet Suite including e-mail and a lightweight browser for the Palm OS.

PS: No money changed hands for me to praise Eudora like this, I just feel that Qualcomm has made a great job with their tools and deserve some praise now and then. :-)

Eudora has always been my favorite mail application. It (almost) supports standard mailbox format (one mailbox = one file) so its easy to port mail from one platform to another, if configured right its virtually bulletproof against viruses, and it just works. My one gripe with it is that its only available for Windows and Mac.

I have written about how Eudora 6 will make it even easier to battle spam with Eudora, and I have to admit that when I saw in which direction Qualcomm is going with Eudora, I was also wondering how it would affect companies such as Spamnix that supplies anti-spam tools for Eudora.

While Eudora 6 is being designed to allow easy implementation of third party anti-spam applications and services, it is also taking a slice out of the market with a very simple anti-spam tool included in the mail application itself. One that should work for most people right out of the box. The little tests I've done shows that the anti-spam feature of Eudora 6.0 has a hit-rate of over 90% straight out the box - without any work needed. Pretty impressive if you ask me, and the added benefit of a tool that is hooked right into the mail application, makes it easy to white list everyone in your address book.

So how does Spamnix meet the future competition, by giving up? Not at all. Today, in an early beta/alpha release their new version sports more muscles than ever with the inclusion of a Bayesian
machine-learning system. (And I was just wondering when they would come around to that!). According to Spamnix software they have archived a 99% accurate spam filtering with this version already. That my friends are almost as good as a challenge-response system such as the one implemented by Earthlink earlier this week, but without all the disadvantages (with senders having to verify themselves before their mail goes through).

Look out for public betas of Spamnix for Eudora 1.2, coming for Windows and Mac OS X soon!

Psst: David Mertz has written a good article about spam filtering techniques, among them Bayesian filtering - if you are wondering what it is.