Spam filtering comes in very handy to manage your mail account, as there are different settings possible. The basic step involves filtering incoming mail for unwanted ones based on the criteria set manually. Even outgoing mails can be filtered if necessary. Nowadays, the mail account provider offers spam filtering, however, there are other high-end softwares available that offer features to better protect your mail account. The World Wide Web is bursting with all kinds of information and some websites can be potential risks due to viruses, inappropriate content etc and this is the reason that the Internet service providers themselves filter the websites based on URLs. Filtering comes in very handy to protect both families and Corporates. It is the best way to filter off adult content in homes with children and in offices to protect from data leak.
Spam filtering is most of the times automatic, the mails are sent to the spam folder based on some common features like mail size, email addresses, keywords etc. With this kind of filtering, there is a possibility that even mails that are not spam get filtered off. There are other advanced filters available that use higher levels of programming and document classification techniques for better efficient filtering of mails. This comes in very handy in big Corporates. There are special image filtering softwares also available that can come in handy to block off inappropriate content based on scanning pictures attached in the mails.
Spam filtering is getting finer by the day and the efficiency of the software is commendable. The filtering offered by mail account companies is good enough for home use, offices may need to install special software with advanced features that include scanning inbound and outgoing mails, server scanning, data protection etc.