There are two levels of spam detection, one at the level of the server and another on the personal computer, depending on where the filters have been installed. Spam detection has become a necessity because the number of unsolicited mail messages is on the rise. Although punishable by law, the action of spamming is conducted by very many dishonest businesses that use the world wide wed to hide their identity and dupe as many people as possible. For the moment, there are just two main ways to limit junk mail: spam prevention and spam detection.

Spam prevention is pretty basic: do not disclose your email address easily. This means that you must not enter the email address on web pages that require registration; better get a secondary address and use that for the purpose. Do not answer emails whose sender you do not know, and resist the temptation of sharing funny messages with friends by forwarding emails. Spam detection on the other hand can be performed on the personal computer or on the server, and in both cases it requires the installation of some software blocking tools.

Filters and blockers perform spam detection. Filters on the other hand organize all the possible spam messages for the computer user to check and eventually delete or confirm as not-spam. Blockers on the other hand perform spam detection and cleaning without allowing the access to the personal computer. Viewing the emails on the server represents one other way of preventing computer infection with viruses and malware. Spam detection can thus be achieved by using the sender’s ID, the keywords specific to spamming and several other criteria integrated in the technology.

The means for scam detection constantly improve, so do the spammers’ strategies to fool blockers and filters and get into people’s mail box. Up to now, there is no total protection against spam. It is also not known whether things will ever be different for the matter and whether there will be more than 99% anti-spam protection available. If kept at a 1% level, spam raises few problems, on condition that you don’t open mails from strangers that somehow manage to pass the most advanced anti-spam tool.