Unfortunately a spam filter has become a necessity for any computer that has email and accesses the internet. Spam, as it has been termed, is unsolicited email which is usually a part of mass commercial advertising campaigns. Essentially, it is junk email. In the offline world junk mail has been sent unsolicited for years. In the online world; however, it presents more trouble than a mailbox loaded with advertisements.

Without a spam filter, your email box will be literally loaded with junk mail if your email address has been in existence for very long. It seems to be something that just happens although giving your email address out, especially posting it on websites, seems to open the virtual door for a flood of junk mail. Even if you don't give your email address out over the internet, you will likely receive spam at some time.

The reason that spam is such a problem is, the junk mail eats up electronic resources like memory and storage space. Also, it is not uncommon for spam to contain computer viruses that can effectively shut down a computer system, or bogus offers and scams that many people fall for. A spam filter aims to stop these junk messages before they come into an email inbox.

Even if the spam you are receiving is nothing more than advertisements, it can be time consuming to check your email and delete all of the irrelevant junk that you receive. Thus, having a spam filter can save you loads of time. Without having to sift through junk email to find the email messages that require your attention, you will be much more productive.

Since the dawn of the internet people have been fighting spam. Recognizing that it is truly a problem, laws have been passed in an attempt to curb it; however, those laws are often ignored and spammers send their unsolicited messages anyway. Thus, even with legislation in place a spam filter is still a necessary time saving tool that can also protect your electronic data from damage and loss.

The anti-spam act in the United States is referred to as the Can- Spam Act of 2003. The law doesn't attempt to curb unsolicited email altogether, but rather aims to prevent deceptive practices so a spam filter is still needed even if the spam you receive doesn't break the law. The act bans the use of misleading or deceptive header information and subject lines, requires that recipients of the email be given an option to opt-out of receiving the email, and requires that marketers include a notice that email is a solicitation or advertisement. It also requires that the sender provide a postal address.

If you engage in email marketing yourself, you need to be sure that the addresses you send email to are legitimate opt-in email addresses and not a harvested list. Otherwise, you may become blacklisted and have your information added to spam filters as a common spammer. Also, it is good to avoid the use of words that are commonly picked up by a spam filter and to inform subscribers and opt-in email recipients to add your email address to the safe list in their spam filter so your messages won't get redirected or deleted.

A spam filter can be installed on individual computers, network servers or email servers. The purpose of a spam filter is to filter out the junk. A basic spam filter does a pretty good job of that, but none of them are all-encompassing or fail proof.

A spam filter intercepts messages that appear to be spam based on the spam filter's configuration. This may include email from servers that are blacklisted, meaning they have been identified as senders of spam, certain email addresses or other terms set by the user. For instance, many spam messages contain the word "free", or other specific words that are easily identifiable. A spam filter can generally be set to intercept emails containing the specified words as well.

Depending upon how you configure your spam filter and the spam filter you choose, spam filters handle email accordingly. Some may deliver a message to the inbox while others will redirect the message and send it to another place, like a junk mail box. Some delete the message altogether or screen out parts of a message that may be offensive or viral.

A spam filter that redirects messages is sometimes a good idea because you can scan through the messages and make sure they actually are spam before they are deleted. However, this in itself can be a time consuming task and many choose to have the suspected spam automatically deleted.

With most spam filters, you can choose email addresses that are "safe" which will prevent the spam filter from destroying or redirecting a message from a certain email address or server. If you subscribe to newsletters from companies that may send out bulk email, it is a good idea to add the sender to your safe list so the information you requested will be ignored by your spam filter and delivered to your inbox.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you're getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com