Junk email, or spam as it is called, has become a huge problem for everyone that uses the internet. Every day dozens or even hundreds of unwanted email clogs up our inboxes and the problem is getting worse. It is both tedious and time consuming having to check all the messages that arrive, decide whether they are useful or not, and delete the junk. Spam Strainer is designed to help keep your POP3 email inbox clear of junk email messages. It does this by checking your email server to see what messages are waiting. It then marks the ones it thinks are spam and with a click of a button, they are all deleted for you. You can then run your email program and retrieve the remaining messages - the ones you actually want. Several techniques are used to identify spam and in addition to these, you can define rules, blacklists, and whitelists. Rules look for keywords and phrases commonly used in spam, blacklists are used to block known senders of spam, and whitelists are used to ensure that your friends, relatives, and business contacts always get through and are never classed as spam. Note: Spam Strainer works with POP3 accounts and not Web-based email like Hotmail.