Want to find best spam filter?

If you were asked what is the most popular email program, I bet that you would say: the Microsoft Outlook. This program is a part of the Microsoft Office suite and works with every Window’s system but the Windows 7 which uses Windows Live Mail which is an upgraded version of Windows Mail (comes with Windows Vista) – free version. All of those program use an integrated Spam filter that is called SmartScreen. The newer versions of the Outlook (from 2007) have new capabilities like new ways of dealing with phishing messages and blocking images from loading. Even thought Windows Live Mail offers some solid spam filters it has awkward to use tools.

Even thought it is a newer program, Outlook still is the program that receives most favorable reviews. That is mostly because it has solid spam filters. On the other hand some people may find it disappointing that you cannot train the filters. You really need no other anti-spam software if you have the Outlook. In most of the reviews you can read that if it comes to detection rates then they are simply amazing and excellent. And if it comes to false positives then they are very rare. Right now the Microsoft Office 2010 is being tested. Some of the experts say that the latest version of Outlook has new, innovative and effective ways of fighting spam.

Web-based filters and software filters that you have installed on your computer use one or a few technologies to filter spam. The most effective are those rules-based filters that require a “training”. Most filters come with default rules that label incoming messages as spam, not spam and undecided. You need to personalize such device and decide which messages are unwanted and which not.

Thanks to it your anti-spam device creates new rules. The training has very good effects but it takes time. Users need to spend at least a month on training the anti-spam device. It is also said that among those programs that require training the best ones are those who use statistical methods that classify emails into categories based on probability. Once, a very effective method was content-based filtering. It blocks keywords or phrases. But it has been outsmarted by spammers who use such tricks as misspelling to fool the filters. To avoid false positives you should use a whitelist. It is an approved-senders list and it is usually a copy of your address book.

You can edit the list any time you want. Well, there is still the risk that a legitimate message will be treated as spam if it comes from an address that is not on your whitelist (for example from new business partners etc.) but there is not a perfect method to totally separate junk mail from legitimate mail. For business customers the best spam filters are those who require from sender a move – he or she needs to enter a code or jump through some other loop. Lots of people say that this is the most effective method to fight the spam. But it also has a major drawback – it bothers legitimate senders.

At the very beginning you need to know that each anti-spam device (spam blockers, filters or some Web filtering devices) vary in their effectiveness. There are times when such programs misidentify legitimate messages as spam. Professionally such occurrences are called false positives. Lately you can find quite a few reviews of spam filters than may help you pick a one that this suitable for you. Nowadays, the main attention is turned to spam blockers but not too many people decide to use such anti-spam devices. Why?

The main issue lies with the method that spam blockers deal with spam. As the name says it “blocks” spam messages. But there is also a risk that it will block a legitimate message too. While when it comes to spam filters you can check the spam folder and see if there are any false positives then you have no way to check if a legitimate message was blocked because it had never reached your mailbox.

Before you decide to pick a Spam filter you should check some reviews about it. You may think that the reviews that are at TopTenReviews.com are quite good and trustworthy but remember that this site has the marketing-driven nature. How can you know that what they write is one hundred percent objective? I recommend you Download.com because there you can find reviews written by users. That is the most trustworthy source of information.

Can you imagine that about 80 percent of email is actually a spam? It is really a terrific amount but there is no need to panic because most of those messages is blocked. Large companies use very expensive spam filters and the most popular web-based email services (like for example Gmail) are pretty good at filtering the junk mail. But we cannot say that the fight against spammers is soon going to end with our victory.

That is true that the anti-spam technology evolves (lately Web filtering devices have risen to a whole new level) but at the same tam spammers develop new tactics and profit angles. Spam is developing into new forms that are very difficult to deal with (for example it is in PDFs, MP3s and JPEGs). Right now there are two types of spam – simple and complex. What is the difference between them?

The junk mail of the first category is very easy to spot and deal with. Usually it promotes illegal product like drugs. The second category tricks the person who received such mail into revealing personal information. Sometimes spammers also send mails that contain viruses. To deal with those dangerous and very annoying messages we use anti-spam software such as spam filters or spam blockers. How do they work? The separate the junk mail from the legitimate one.

With anti-spam software it is not such an easy job if it comes to picking one of them. So before you make decision which spam filter, blocker or Web filtering software you choose you need to take a note of a few things. The most popular anti-spam device is a Spam filter so let’s talk about it. If you decide to buy a Spam filter then first of all you must make sure that it is compatible with your Internet mail provider. How to do it?

Simply check if your service provider offers you POP3, IMAP or any other access protocol. It is very important because each Spam filter is compatible with different protocols. Next, you should check if the  anti-spam software is compatible with your email program. When web-based spam blockers such as ClearMyMail work with almost every email client, you cannot expect every Spam filter to do so. Some of them work only with Outlook and Outlook Express. Some of them, even among those the most expensive, do not support email clients like Mozilla’s Thunderbird, Eudora or even Windows 7’s Windows Live Mail.

If you are a novice if it comes to spam filters then you should take a note that not all spam filters are compatible with all services. Some of them use their own proprietary mail systems. Even Yahoo and Hotmail can be tricky. There are lots of Internet service providers usually offer some kind of anti-spam software so make sure that you do not have already one of those. How do they work? Well, not bad. They catch about 40 to 80 percent of junk mail.