An important part of your computers defense is a spam blocker (also known as a spam filter). These filters prevent malicious code that is made by virus writers from being transferred onto your computer. Without a proper spam blocker viruses can be used to control a victims computer. To defend against this danger a blocker must be installed.
Spam blockers can be purchased from vendors world wide in either retails store or online. There are many spam blockers that can be downloaded for free from various sites. The most reliable spam blockers usually come with an annual cost but the benefits of having one outweigh the cost.
Filters are programmed with specific jobs to identify spam. I will briefly explain some of the some of the basic features that a filter uses to weed out spam:
Supplied rules and signatures: This is a list of well known list of spamming patterns that is used to identify spam messages.
Filtering policies for enterprises: These are custom made configurations that are made for a specific companies needs.
User preferences: These are the settings that the individual creates once the software is installed on the computer. These setting are focused on types of spam that annoys the user. This also controls how the software will function of the costumer’s computer.
Pre defined blacklists: Another list of the widely known untrusted web addresses. These sites are be default blocked from access. If the user wishes to bypass this setting he must add them to his whitelist.
The last feature is a Quarantine list: This is a place where all messages are stored for the user to manually check. In the case of an accidental block, the user can still retrieve the message.
Once a message has been deemed as spam. It will usually be deleted instantly or within a set period of days.
With this information you should have a general idea of how spam blockers function and defend computers from daily spam.