Spam Annihilator uses a database of rules to detect spam and remove it from your inbox. The program also has some internal 'LOGIC' rules that it applies to each email. Each rule has a weight or what we refer to as a 'percentage of probability' that if an email satisfies the rule, i.e. the rule data is contained in the email, then the probability factor is added to the cumulative score for the email. We call this process 'cumulative probability'.

Spam Annihilator gives you a greater degree of control over the spam detection process with many configuration settings. You can disable completely different types of rules and different parts of the spam detection process. You can modify the sensitivity of different kinds of rules including the LOGIC rules. This is a bit like making the holes in the net smaller or bigger. Spam Annihilator uses plugin modules to extend the spam detection features. You can configure many aspects of each plugin module and you turn them on and off with ease. Click on Plugins for more information about plugin modules.

Spam Annihilator does not get in the way of your incoming email, to use it you first run Annihilator to clean your incoming email then read your email in the normal way. Most if not all of the spam will have been removed by Annihilator so you can concentrate on the email that matters. Once you have configured Spam Annihilator then the email that was obviously spam will have been removed from your inbox. Any email that is dubious will have been saved to a hold folder for your review.

There are many anti-spam products available so what makes Annihilator better than the rest ?

• You do not have to change your email setup in any way, such as redirecting your email through a service that cleans your email or change the settings of your email reader.
• Spam Annihilator runs on your computer so you have complete control over your very own spam detection engine. You are not using a generic spam detection engine on your ISP's mail server so you can choose what happens to spam.
• Spam Annihilator classifies spam as either obvious or dubious, giving you the choice of what to do in either case.
• Spam Annihilator does not bounce email with annoying challenge-response questions. These annoy people who send you legitimate email and only serve to clog the Internet with even more traffic.
• More than just whitelisting email addresses and domains, the 'Overrides' rule table gives you the full power of the rule processing engine so you can add rules of any kind to indicate legitimate emails.
• You can add your own rules to the rule database to improve the detection ratio. These can be new rules or rules that take precedence over the existing rules.
• A unique system allows you to modify the overall sensitivity and also the sensitivity of different kinds of rules to fine tune the spam detection engine.
• Spam Annihilator has the ability to use automatically downloaded plugin modules to extend the features and capability of the spam detection process.

OK so spam annihilator has some good features but I'm using Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail et al. and they have top notch spam detection engines, why do I need spam annihilator ?

Well if their spam detection engines are so good why do I still get emails for Viagra in my inbox ? I know with 100% certainty that any email in my inbox about Viagra, Cialis, re-financing, cheap software and all the rest of the rubbish that continues to arrive is spam, no question about it. Spam Annihilator works on cumulative probability, but you can configure it to work on absolute certainty - the power is yours.