You either hate it or you loath it. There is no in-between. Think about it, when was the last time someone said to you “I got a wonderful SPAM the other day, it saved me a lot of money”? Although it is not really relevant to the subject matter of this website it is something that affects us all and I will be dealing with ways to alleviate it.
    The simplest way is to change your email address. Beware this may be only a temporary fix. Be careful who you give your address to. Have a spare address for junk. Legitimate traders may pass your details on for marketing purposes. This one can be abandoned and replaced when it gets too well known.

    Due to the vast increase of SPAM (>95% of my emails were SPAM), I had to change my personal email address.

My reasons were: -

 1.    I do not wish to enlarge any parts of my body. Especially the female bits that I do not have.
2.    I do not wish to buy VIAGRA. Especially from someone who does not appear to know how to spell it correctly.
3.    I do not need a Degree, which does not require any studying.
4.    I do not want a blind date from some insistent woman who thinks she has seen details I did not post and cannot seem to remember her own name (the message is always the same except for the name). Besides, my wife won't let me.
5.    Pornography. See last part of reason 4.
6.    Re Mortgage, Debt consolidation, Insurance, Investments. Would you trust your money with someone who has tried their damnedest to irritate you when you have used your best efforts to not receive their emails in the first place? Presumably they are under the impression that this will result in my admiration. Given the opportunity,  a kick up the backside would be nearer the mark.
7.    Special offers for PCs, Home Electrical, Cameras, and Books etc. See reason 6.

 And finally,

 8.    I do not like being invited to unsubscribe from a mailing list and then being told that I must be  f***ing stupid to fall for that one.

             I urge everyone not to buy from a spammer, ever. Even if they have something you want at what appears to be a good price. It is the very small percentage of people who deal with them that keeps the spammers going. They would stop if it wasn’t worthwhile. They do not do it for fun but for money.
            So what else can we do about it? I use Outlook Express and will base all my comments on it but other email software will have similar options.

Block Senders

Highlight the message, click on “Message” from the top menu bar, select “Block Sender” and that’s it. You will never hear from that sender again. Unfortunately the sender will change their address and make this exercise almost a waste of time.
    Imagine. A door-to-door salesman knocks on your door every day, trying to sell you something that you do not want. Eventually you will tell him of her not to come back. The following day a different person that knows that you do not want anything is trying to sell you the same things. On top of that, if you even answer the door your name and address will be sold to every other door-to-door salesperson who will do the same.  If this is not an infringement of your personal freedom then I don’t know what is.

Anti-Spam Software

With names like Mail Washer and SpamKiller they sound good may be easier to use but do not actually seem to do a lot more than Outlook Express.

Mail Filters

            Filters can be set up to remove unwanted emails automatically. They are not 100% effective but are still worth doing. In truth they are far more effective at sorting your emails, which in my mind is a very close next best thing.

 Known Contacts

The first thing to do is sort out all your known contacts into a folder, which can be called “Inbox Known”.
                So go into “Tools”, “Message Rules”, then “Mail”. Click on the “New” button. Select “Where the From Line contains people” and then “Move it to the specified folder” in the second pane. A third pane will now have appeared. Click on “contains people” (underlined in blue) and the address book button. You could select either the entire address book or the chosen few. Give it a name for the rule such as “Known Contacts” click OK and you are done. You could also set up similar rules for various friends, relatives or companies that you would normally sort into their own folders. This will save you time later on so is well worth doing anyway.

 The Rest

            Before we delete emails without reading them I suggest that they be sorted into a folder called “SPAM?” to give confidence that no wanted emails get deleted. Set up another rule as before but this time select “Where the subject line contains Specific words” and  “Move it to the specified folder”. Then click on “contains specific words” and type all the words that are commonly seen in the subject line or title of a Spam. Note that “words” in this context actually means word or phrase. Apart from all the sexual ones you should also consider drugs and money words, together with the deliberate misspellings and characters such as !!!!, ???? or <<<<<< which you would not normally expect from any of your known contacts.
                A similar filter can be set up for the “message body” to try and pick out any offending text. I have not found this so reliable but is worth a go, as it will pick up some garbage. Again you could filter any mail  “Where the To line contain people” then select your own address. This should pick up any mail that is specific to your address. For example, if your address is joe@surname.server.co.uk it will filter emails of this address from ones like anyone@surname.server.co.uk which will also get sent to your mailbox.
                As you receive emails you can fine-tune the rules. When happy that no wanted emails will be deleted the action can be changed from “Move it to the specified folder” to “Do not Download it from server” Then copy it and edit the copy so that the action is now “Delete it from server” as Outlook Express will not do it in one go. Make sure the “delete” comes after the “don’t download” using the “Move up” and “Move down” buttons.

Filter for Size

            You do not have broadband, and someone has sent you a snapshot from his or her digital camera with a file size so big that it takes more than an hour to download. Effectively blocking up your email account. Select a rule with “Where the message size is more than size” then specify which size you will accept. It will then stay on the server until you deal with it later.

 Filter Order

            Use the “Move up” and “Move down” buttons to specify what order the rules should be processed as this will make a difference as to where and how the emails are processed.

 Inbox

            The inbox will now only contain any emails which do not conform to your rules. New contacts, old contacts with new email addresses and of course the remaining Spam. The contacts can be added to the “Known” rule and many of the spams can have additional filter words set up to trap them. There will still be some left over as spammers have no intention of making it easy for us but the numbers will hopefully be down to a manageable level.
         Ask your friends to please try to avoid titles like "Are you getting enough?", "I've got big 'uns" or the usual suggestive body parts. If they want you to read what they have to say that is.
    Isn’t it a shame thought that we have to go to such measures just because a few selfish people insist on trying to sell us things we do not want using offensive methods whilst refusing us the option of saying “NO”. The sooner it is made illegal internationally the better.
   Long live the Internet and emails. It's been very useful so far but is beginning to die an unpleasant death as more and more people turn their backs on it because they cannot stand the filth that we are unwillingly bombarded with.