This program is singularly responsible for reducing my spam intake to nearly zero. 

During the week of December 12, 2004 and December 19, 2004, SpamPal for Windows tagged 391 messages in my inbox as spam. During that same week, I did see 10 spam messages, meaning that SpamPal for Windows was effective in eliminating 97.5% of the spam from my e-mail diet! Just as important, the program did not tag as spam any of the email from friends, family, mailing lists, or the bowling alley!

A simple filtering rule in any email client of my choice shuttles those messages off into a folder for me to look at later -- or not.

Unlike the usually ineffective spam protection provided by your email client and ISP, SpamPal for Windows puts you in control over how it detects spam. For example, there are many Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBLs) that help identify likely spam by looking at its source.  In fact, I am only using RBLs right now as I recently changed some email programs.  The RBLs alone effectively tagged all my spam.

In addition, fans of the SpamPal for Windows program have written plug-ins one can add that provide other effective measures to identify spam. The most popular and effective are Bayesian filtering, URL checking, and RegEx filtering. (The Bayesian filtering method is particularly fascinating!)

SpamPal is designed for users that use an email client to get email from a server, rather than a website, to read email.

The program does its work by doing its analysis during the communication between your email client and your email server. At first, this analysis adds a few seconds per message, but the time saved by not having to delete all that spam yourself far outweighs the small delay. After a while, it gets faster as it learns which sources send valid email to you, and stops performing analysis on those messages.

The important point is that the user is totally in charge. I have turned off the filters provided in Outlook and by my ISPs, and I have let SpamPal for Windows take over! For a long time, the SpamPal site has been a recommended link on the bottom of each page of my website. Now, you know why!