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now children....can we all say firewall?

A "Firewall" is not a anti-spam device. It is a network protection device.

There are two classes of spam-filters, consumer, for the end-user machine, and commercial for email server systems.

"Spam-filters" are software installed on the machine receiving the email or serving it.

A "spam firewall" (not "firewall" as you stated) is a stand-alone network device requiring a IT professional to install and operate. Such a device - if it is worth anything - costs at least $3,000 and has yearly licensing fees.

So when you stand on your mountain of road apples and condescendingly call everyone on this thread "children", as if you're some IT god who's sullied himself to throw all of us hopeless kindergarteners a bone of your infinite wisdom, I assume you think we all have thousands of dollars to blow on a device for our home computers which no one here should actually need.

You could have avoided looking like a moron here three ways: 1. By actually knowing what your were talking about or, if you do (which I doubt considering your inability to grasp even the concept of capital letters), choosing your words more carefully so as to convay that you acutally understand how computer networks function. 2. By not calling your peers at FR "children" and 3. By not being a jerk-wad.

In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Deleting Spam Costs Billions, Study Finds, Route101 wrote:

never heard of a spam firewall?...then you deserve all the spam you get..

I own and operate a small hosting company. Route101 --- you obviously don't have the foggiest notion of what's involved in the battle against spam, while Psycho_Bunny and I have been fighting it.

I'm an open-source shop ... so I use Qmail along with SpamAssassin, Razor, DCC and half a dozen RBLs (Real-time Block Lists) to reduce the flood. Better than 75% of all connection attempts are rejected using the RBLs, SpamAssassin identifies perhaps 75% of the remaining spam, but the tiny fraction that is left still accounts for perhaps as much as 20% of the mail to my desktop.

The cost of maintaining all this effort is high, and the cost of the bandwidth is also considerable.

Spammers should be shot.

I volunteer.