Overall, the spam protection built into Gmail is very good. Very seldom do I get a message in my Inbox which I mark as spam. On the flip side, however, I have anywhere from 350-400 are in my spam folder at any give time. Personally, I don’t feel the need to spend my time scanning through all these to see if there might be a legit email among the garbage....

Using spam filters is one of the most common ways to battle spam. What this means is that the software scans the incoming email, runs it through a series of tests and compares it to known spam criteria, then decides whether it is a good email or a spam message. If it is spam, it will act according to settings. If it is good, it makes it to your inbox. The...