In Front Of The Line uses specific tools and methods to determine whether or not an email is spam. Specifically, each sending server is verified against a spamming-server list and acted upon accordingly. There are also heuristics in place to determine, from the content of the email, the likely hood of the message being spam.
It is impossible for any software package or method to determine automatically for certain whether or not a message is spam. The indications that it searches for in messages can appear in non-spam messages too. Spams are usually advertisements of one sort or another; many legitimate mailing lists pay for themselves by carrying advertising in their messages, and these adverts often use the same sort of language as spam.
Similar language can also appear in legitimate marketing messages and alerts that people have signed up to receive. Newsletters often use the same presentational techniques (formatting, colour, etc) that are commonly used in spam. It's even possible that a single message will be regarded as spam by one person and non-spam by another. In the end it's a personal judgment.
We can't make that judgment for you, but we can supply information to help in making that judgment, and the facilities to use it.
The spam score assigned to any message is not a certain judgment but is instead an estimate of the likelihood that it's spam. The higher the score, the more likely it is that it's spam, and the lower the score the less likely it is. But it's quite possible for a non-spam to score highly and for a spam to score lowly.
Tips to avoid getting spam:
- Use Email Software / Clients to manage junk e-mailers
- Avoid replying to the sender of spam
- Alter your e-mail address when you post it on newsgroups [ie. "... send me an email using myname"at"mydomain"dot"com. "]
- Don't give out your primary e-mail address - use a secondary one for questionable sites
- Make use of laws against spam
- Be cautious when posting your email address on your Web page
- Review Web sites' privacy policies
- Do not forward chain e-mail