I use Outlook Via Gmail. Never needed to set up filters. Gmail filters catches 99.999% of stuff.
My other email accounts at work, and via ISP, hotmail etc seem to be spam magnets. I've some knowledge of how to avoid spam and I've uncommon name. But the autobots will eventually generate every email address.
I still say most non spam email will be the email thats most unique, and has the least distribution and from known mail servers. Regardless of how spam is auto generated it all has a common text, no matter how they try to make it different and it will have a large distribution. it has to have those common charateristics to deliver a useful message to enough people. So they best place to catch that is on the ISP before it gets to the users.
Our spam filters at work catch the spam and send you a notification of the header and sender email address thats been caught. You can choose to release it. 95% of the time its right. However people need some skills in how to write email that doesn't look like spam. Most of the false postives we get are personal mail and atachments that people shouldn't be using their work email for in the first place.
A simple trick to avoid some spam is to choose a non normal email name. Something like Sm!th7C@AAM.com isn't going to be hit as much as JohnSmith7 etc. Also use a dummy 2nd email account for registering online for things.
