spmug612 Daily Fight Against Spam
Q. I made the mistake of filling out a survey online, and ever since I
have spent 10 to 15 minutes a day adding addresses to my "block senders"
list. Is there any way I can block all of these at once and report them
to some entity? A. Fighting spam can be a daily battle for many people,
especially because those who send junk mail are constantly finding new
methods of delivering unsolicited messages. There are several approaches
to cleaning up your mailbox, including buying a third-party spam-filter
program, which is often included now in many Internet security software
suites. Other defenses against in-box invasion include using a mail
program with a built-in junk-mail filter or subscribing to a service
that culls spam from your legitimate messages. Using a spam-screening
service may require you to get a new e-mail address - or ask your
correspondents to verify their identities by quickly filling out an
online form before their messages can get through - but this approach
can almost eliminate junk mail because any unapproved sender is blocked.
ChoiceMail (www.digiportal.com/choicemail.html) is one company that
offers this sort of permission-based e-mail, and there are links and
reviews to several similar mail-screening systems at
spamlinks.net/filter-cr.htm. Using a separate spam filter with or within
your mail program can trap a lot of unsolicited messages in a Junk Mail
box, but may require some fine-tuning on your part as the program learns
what you consider spam. These types of spam filters tag suspected junk
mail and can usually reroute spam into its own separate mailbox for easy
mass deletion. If you find a piece of legitimate mail has been caught in
the spam filter (or a piece of junk has wiggled through), you typically
just have to select the message and tag it yourself as wanted or
unwanted so the filter remembers what to do the next time it encounters
a similar message. As for reporting spam, the Federal Trade Commission
has advice for consumers at
www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/inbox.htm.