[Eric in the Ozarks]

A Penny Stock sales company has got my fax number. I'd like to return the favor but they hide their return number.

[goldstategop]

I highly recommend http://www.mailblocks.com Since I signed up last year, the flood of spam into my MSN mailbox has dried up to a trickle. Well worth the price.

[cripplecreek]

My vote would be for the symbolic stoning of spammers with the actual products they push. If the get pelted with a few million male enhancement products it might act as a deterrent.

[proxy_user]

Law against crimes that no one can stop, threatening huge punishments to people no one can catch, merely add insult to injury.

The spammers are so far ahead of LEA it's ridiculous...

[areafiftyone]

Actually the porn spam and decreased tremendously. I don't get it anymore. I used to get so much of it even if I blocked them all . I hated those porn spam e-mails. If I blocked one the same one would pop up from a different e-mail name. My regular spam has decreased slightly too I noticed. I used to get about 50 or 60 a day - now I get the most about 9 or 10.

[devane617]

Mine has increased lots more than yours. I receive an average 8 spam emails every hour. It will be very difficult to control this problem.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Somehow "johnkerryforpresident.org" keeps seeping past my filters.

[Marie Antoinette]

It seems like we get more, but it's held in my "pending" folder online, so it never makes it to my machine anymore.

I've decided to use my "Friends" system that is provided by the ISP and spam bots and invalid email accts are screened out. If there is a real person on the other end, they just hit "reply" to my automated message and their message will get through and they are added to my "acceptable" list.

A pain at first, but I no longer get viagra spam :-)

[ysoitanly]

Quit whining. My penis has increased 1000% and I'm a female!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I use two good spam filters but the stuff keeps coming in carloads.

Use Mailwasher. You can view email while it is on your ISP's server and bounce the spam back to the source before it is even downloaded by your email client to your PC.

That tactic alone will wind up reducing the amount of spam generated by repeat sources. What happens is the source mailer eventually gives up on your address since it receives back no indication that the mail was delivered to the destination.

[grellis]

I get relatively little spam, maybe five or six emails daily. Almost invariably they are updates from a soccer website and pleas to consider having my penis enlarged. What's curious is that I really don't care for soccer and I'm a woman.

[AgThorn]

White lists, black lists, spam filters ... I think the only solution is to charge everyone a penny to email a message ... I am definitely game, and this removed the whole financial incentive that allows spammers to mail 2-3 million pieces for one possible sale.

It works for bulk mail items to your home address, time to do likewise for email.

[LowOiL]

There is only one thing to do when you have that much spam. Delete that email address and sign up another one. You have been passed around like a bad cold. I have a new email address for about a year now and surprise surprise, I get no spam. I never use my home address except for family and friends and have my spam address at something.yahoo.com that I use to give when I have to give an address.

One year, no spam. Yahoo

[spodefly]

Get Mailwasher Pro, set up your filters and friends list, and no more spam will ever reach your email client.

[GreenHornet]

Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam.......

[AgThorn]

I have been using POBOX.com as a virtual email address, keeping my email friends from having to see all the ISP's that I have had over the years.

A side benefit has been a spam filtering service that I have slowly ratched up from it's 10 levels to near level 1 to 2 now (have to check) since I have learned to trust it so explicitly.

At the same time I have been sending my spam to SPAMCOP, a great blacklist service (among others). I just discovered (as needled on from this thread) that my great POBOX.com service is now tied to SPAMCOP and a lot of other black list services (Spamhaus, MailPolice, Not Just Another Bogus List, etc.), as well as other outright blocking abilities (e.g. don't send me anything from Nigeria, etc.)

It has greatly expanded it's spam prevention services so I have just turned it all on. And all for $15 a year, for three 'logical' addresses pointed at one physical. More logicals are available at 3 for $7.

I have been shopping all sorts of tools but now that my existing tool has just been upgraded tremendously, I am quite hopeful that I will have the best of all worlds with POBOX.com.

[ampat]

I have been getting about 4 spams a day recently. That's less than before the legislation, and I always add them to my junkmail list to "train" my screener. That's in addition to my ISP's screener. The problem seems to be spammers changing their email addresses frequently.

[firebrand]

Since the legislation, my spam with gobbledegook ISPs has stopped, but now it's all coming from yahoo.com addresses. I block them, but I don't want to block all of yahoo. Irritating. Wish yahoo would fix this. Seems that all the other ISPs have.

[HairOfTheDog]

I register at sites I wish to register at, and have only one email address.

But I don't get ~any~ spam. I figure either spam is only a problem on "FREE" email accounts, i.e. hotmail and yahoo, because premium services like Comcast filter it (and AT&T before that) or folk that get a lot of spam get it because they registered at naughty places.

[solitas]

Try this: go buy a domain name and redirect your emails.

I bought a domain name (my last name) and have the emails directed to my REAL email account (a local ISP). True, it does cost me another $15/year but it give me a practically _infinite_ number of email addresses to use: one for family, one for friends, there's a jcpenney@{name}.com, sears@[name].com, and so forth.

Part of the redirection service is the ability to have a list of locked-out names. If I start getting pornography addressed to, say, acme@[name].com then I'll lock out 'acme' (and email acme themselves to change the email they use to acme1, or something, if I still want to receive emails from them). My kill list has about 15 names on it at the moment - one or two are companies that I still want to get email from (sales, discounts etc.) and the other names were SOLD by the companies to spammers.

There's a counter associated with every blocked name and I can see how many emails have been refused (the sender gets a reply saying "name does not exist". It's also possible to have a list of 'accepted only' names and have everything else blocked.

The best thing about having your own domain name (you don't have to be a guru - it's surprisingly simple to set it up) is that if/when I decide to drop my current ISP and move to another, I can send all my mail there and STILL keep my domain name (so I don't have to notify everyone-and-his-brother when I change ISP's). You can 'split' your emails too: say you're going on vacation. You can receive the email on your home account and forward a copy of it to a temporary web-based emailer that you can reach from anywhere. And even more stuff. Consider purchasing your own domain name to avoid junk emails. I think it's money well spent. (No, I don't represent a domain name service or provider.) Feel free to Freep-mail me if you have questions.