Free Spam Filtering Don’t Pay over the Odds.

If you want the very best spam filtering available, the fact of the matter is that you’re going to have to pay a dollar or two. There are dozens of great spam filters out there, many for under twenty bucks, but you know what? Let’s be completely honest, how much protection do you really need?

While the paid programs may offer the very best, most fully packed, impregnable spam defenses in existence, most of us don’t really need the Great Wall of China or anything. Most of us are pretty good at keeping spam out of our folders by simply not putting our email up just anywhere, and by using one of the many simple, free spam filters out there.

If you run a popular website, of course, it might be a different story. When you have something of a high profile on the internet, you’re more of a prime target for spammers, but most of us don’t really need much more than what free spam filtering can offer.

So with that in mind, here are a few recommendations and suggestions we have for keeping your files free of spam without paying a cent.

Email Disguising-

You might have seen this trick before. Now, if your email is, say, Jimmyjoebob@blablablamail.com, rather than typing it as is when you need to share it on a message board, or even in an email, just type Jimmyjoebob(at)blablablamail(dot)com. Most spam bots will not be able to identify this as a real email address, and will simply ignore it. This is a good idea even if you have a great spam filter, since it can decrease the amount of spam your filter has to deal with, saving valuable memory space and bandwidth.

Free Spam Blockers-

If your email client doesn’t already have an effective spam blocker, look into downloading one of the free ones out there. POPFile comes highly recommended, as does eXpurgate. You’ll probably want to try a few of them out and see what works best.

Just Watch Out-

Don’t share your email unless you have to. Many people use a secondary email as a dummy account when signing up for forums and so on, so as to ensure that their primary email account never even has to worry about spam. It’s a good idea, and it works, but it can be a bit of a hassle. Still, don’t give away your email address unless you need to.

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