[Publius6961]

I keep thinking that there must be some way for legitimate senders to identify themselves to my account in such a way that if they fail to do so, the mail does not come through. Is it really that complicated?

[Let's Roll]

No.

I have Earthlink - and it is a full service ISP which costs more than the cut rate ones BUT

Basically it lets you turn on their "high" spam blocker and they don't let anyone through to your inbox except those in your address book.

They send a message to all those they block telling them your mail box is being blocked and giving them the option of stating their business. You see those statements and that catches Aunt Gladys who you forgot to include in your address book and the online order confirmations etc. When you see those requests you can decide to accept them into your mailbox or not.

Earthlink holds everyone else in a suspected folder and you can also go into it and double check for Aunt Gladys and/or permanently block the spammers or not and the folder self cleans every two weeks.

This sounds like a lot of involvement on your part but I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks - although had Earthlink for years - and I can already see that I will soon be letting that folder self clean every two weeks and rely on the Aunt Glady's to make their requests.

This service does not cost any more, but I do pay c. $22 a month. They also have a virus blocker you can turn on and an accelerator for those still on dial up.

I would recommend earthlink or similar ISP - it is worth it.

Also good tech support.

[ModelBreaker]

I keep thinking that there must be some way for legitimate senders to identify themselves to my account in such a way that if they fail to do so, the mail does not come through. Is it really that complicated?

You can do that too. Most isp's have an option that lets you require that any sender identify themselves as a human--not a machine--before the email gets thru. They have to type in a word that they see.