Due to the growing trend of spam marketing on the World Wide Web, software engineers have had to work feverishly to develop spam filters and anti-spam software in order to combat this unwanted junk mail. However, having a spam filter in place is one thing, but having the peace of mind in knowing that it will actually do its job is a completely different matter altogether.

When setting up any kind of spam filter or anti-spam software, it is important to make sure that it will catch any unsolicited commercial e-mails before they reach your inbox; that is the main purpose. On the other hand, it is equally important that your anti-spam software isn’t too strict as it may confuse some of your personal, genuine e-mail messages with spam. Fortunately, there is a very simple method you can use when trying to evaluate your anti-spam software or spam filters.

One innovative method you can use is to set up an e-mail account that is only meant to receive spam. Send a few real e-mails to this account yourself, and ask some friends or co-workers to do the same over the period of one week. After the week is up and you’ve collected a number of genuine and spam messages, you’ll be able to see not only how many spam messages make it through your anti-spam software, but you’ll be able to find out how many genuine messages your anti-spam software is likely to mark as a false positive, as well.