The ideal anti-spam software is the one that ensures you your privacy and blocks 100 percent of the emails you do not want to receive. But it is never going to be possible. Spammers are always inventing new techniques to trick the filters, and the developers of anti-spam software try not to overlook it.

Most anti-spam programs can be customized to your needs, and only the approved emails come into your inbox. Let's look at the features and benefits of anti-spam software.

Deleting spam before it reaches the inbox. Certain anti-spam solutions take the decision about spam messages not only based on the sender's email address, they also analyze the subject lines and the message content. Some anti-spam programs allow you block emails with various types of attachments. Most anti-spam solutions catch and delete detected spam emails before they slip into your inbox.

Filter updates. Most programs for filtering spam come with hundreds of filters built in. In addition, the developers of those programs release new anti-spam filters regularly. This ensures that your anti-spam software is always up-to-date.

Custom filters. Certain anti-spam filters allow you tailor built in filters to your personal needs as well as create your own filters, depending on the spam and legitimate emails you receive.

Quarantining spam. Spam blockers prevent junk emails from entering your inbox and move them to a specific quarantine or trash folder. Quarantined emails are stored there for a number of days and then deleted forever. This delay allows you review deleted emails to check if all of them are spam.

Recovering emails. Certain anti-spam filters store quarantined emails for a fixed number of days in the specific trash folder and allow you to recover any email.

Your personal whitelist and blacklist. You can maintain your own lists of trusted email senders (whitelist) and suspicious email addresses, from which you are used to receive spam (blacklist). You can always update your whitelist and blacklist as you want.

Monitoring multiple email accounts. This feature allows you monitor and filter your email from multiple email accounts. You to filter your home email from the office, and vice versa.

Automatic mode. Certain anti-spam programs can check inbound mail at fixed time intervals and delete spam without your participation.