Every individual who uses email should have a spam blocker up and running on their computer. Spam presents a major problem for both individuals and businesses. Unwanted email clogs up inboxes and can inflict a computer with a harmful virus.

The spam problem has become so large that even the United States’ government is involved in trying to prevent spam. Some computer companies have also established groups designed to implement new strategies to prevent spamming. Individuals spend millions of dollars each year trying to protect their computers from spam and harmful viruses.

Many people install spam blockers or filters on their computer to help them get rid of unwanted email. These programs work by either blocking certain email addresses or filtering what is believed to be spam into another file in the email program. As spam is always changing, spam blockers and filters do not always work in getting rid of every piece of spam and sometimes real messages are blocked accidentally.

A spam blocker can use several different ways of trying to protect a computer. The first type is blacklists, where the email addresses and domain names of spammers are blocked. This system is not considered to be very effective since spammers can easily get around the system and there may be a number of legitimate emails blocked.

Another type of spam blocker is collaborate blacklists. With this type, users identify spammers and a centralized system creates a list of email addresses that users have labeled as spammers. Sometimes legitimate newsletters and other emails get blacklisted when enough individuals label them as spam instead of unsubscribing themselves.

A final type of spam blocker is a whitelist. In this system, a user sets up the email and domain addresses that he will accept email from. When an unknown email sends a message, it is blocked. The system can be labor intensive as the user must manually set up the accepted emails.

Some whitelists use an extension which sends a response back to email addresses asking them to confirm their identity. This helps identify real emails, while weeding out spammers who won’t reply. Newsletters can also get caught in this system so users need to make sure that they manually confirm all newsletters or promotional emails that they want.

Although spam blockers present some challenges in that they sometimes let spam through and sometimes block legitimate emails, they are currently some of the best ways to identify and prevent spam. Advances will continue to occur as individuals, companies, and governments work to create better ways of protecting inboxes from spam.

A spam blocker is an important tool for every computer user, even though the system remains imperfect. Spam blockers will help save you time and help protect your computer from harmful viruses.