According to Leon Rishnow, Cloudmark's vice president of engineering, the free software can support a single email account and is designed to meet the simple needs of consumer users of the internet.
A pro (pay-for) version of the software is also available, and this supports multiple email accounts, as well as being aimed at the business user of the internet, he told Infosecurity.
Although Cloudmark is well known in ISP circles, where its service is offered to more than a billion internet users around the world, Rishnow said that 80% of its direct pay-for subscribers are business users of the internet.
The aim with the free software is to raise the profile of the company with consumer users, he said, adding that the collective intelligence from the software will be used for the benefit of all Cloudmark users.
Cloudmark has had a pay-for client application for users of Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird for several years, so won't the launch of a free service mean that pay-for users will move on over to the free facility? we asked Rishnow.
"We will have a pay-for option. The free version only supports one account, so if a user wishes to check spam on multiple accounts, they will still have to go for the pay-for version", he replied.
Interestingly, whilst the Cloudmark VP acknowledged that a number of IT security suites – such as Zonealarm Security Suite and McAfee Security – feature an integrated anti-spam filter, he said those vendors approach the feature from an anti-virus viewpoint.
"We approach the technology from any anti-spam viewpoint", he said, adding that this approach is more effective at stopping all spam and reducing the number of false positives.
Also, unlike other vendors of free IT security software, Rishaw says that the pay-for upgrade will not be as 'in your face' as some of the competition.
"There is a need for a simple product that just works, without bells and whistles", he said, adding that large numbers of users are not looking for complex features in their anti-spam applications. "They just want a simple product that works."