Spam is more than an annoyance, it is a huge expense and a threat to unsuspecting Internet users. Some Internet experts estimate that spam accounts for almost 75% of all email - that means 3 out of every 4 messages are junk! AOL handles about 30 million messages per day. Over 22 million of them could be spam no one wants. A recent article on Out-Law.com cites a report from Ferris Research that estimates that US firms will spend $17 Billion handling spam in 2005. Ouch. You're paying for that in higher prices for everything those businesses do. And every morning you're faced with an inbox full of junk and worse.

Spam - formally known as 'Unsolicited Commercial Email' (UCE) - is the junk mail that fills your inbox. The least offensive spam emails are advertisements for legitimate services (assuming any company that breaks the spamming laws can be considered 'legitimate'). The most dangerous spam includes hard-core pornography and attempts to steal personal information, called 'phishing'. You're probably familiar with the most common examples of spam:

• Chain letters
• Pyramid schemes (including Multilevel Marketing, or MLM)
• Work at home schemes
• Other "Get Rich Quick" or "Make Money Fast" (MMF) schemes
• Offers of phone sex lines
• Ads promoting pornographic web sites
• Stock offerings for unknown start-up corporations
• Quack health products and remedies
• Illegally pirated software ("Warez")
• Even offers for software to collect e-mail addresses to let you send own spam

The Federal Trade Commission maintains a list of the Dirty Dozen' spam scams here. Our favorite spam remains the Nigerian banking scam spam. Not only has this been a spam staple for years, but the scammers are soooooo creative. www.Potifos.com has a collection of 540 different versions of the scam letter. And he hasn't updated his list since April, 2004. The Federal Trade Commission has a more serious alert about the Nigerian bank scam here.

• Make it hard for spammers to get your email address. Don't display your address in public places like newsgroups, chat rooms or any web site's online directory. That includes your ISP's online directory.
• Before you sign up for a web site's membership area or mailing list, check their privacy policy. Sites based in the US are required by law to post their privacy policy that tells you what information the collect about visitors, and what they intend to do with that information. Reputable sites will require you to 'Opt In' - actually confirm that you know and approve that you're signing up to receive email - before they send you any email. If a site doesn't have a privacy policy clearly posted, or the policy does not specifically say what they do with addresses they collect, don't sign up.
• If you're satisfied with a site's privacy policy, make sure you read the entire signup form before you submit your personal information. Reputable sites will let you 'Opt Out' - decline to have them share your email address - of offers from third party emailers. Sites often use terms like 'our partners' or 'firms with products of interest to our members' to confuse users who only skim the form before submitting. Make sure you understand if you need to check or uncheck the box to avoid unwanted email before you submit the form.
• If you're an active web user, and need to post messages in newsgroups, professional forums or sign up with membership sites, consider getting a second email address to display, and keep your 'main' address for only friends and family. If your spare address ends up on too many spammer's lists, change it. Your ISP probably offers several email addresses with your subscription. If they don't, or your family has used them all up, there are sites like Own-a-Domain.com that offer inexpensive email accounts - under $5 per month for 100 addresses on your own domain name. For our sites, and our customers sites, we often add an email address specifically to sign up for a service. BlockAll.com uses over 20 addresses like NameOfList@blockall.com for each list we sign up for. This lets us determine which sites are responsible with their email list, and which sites we don't care to deal with again.
• If you operate your own web site, don't put your email address in the text or HTML code. Spammers 'harvest' email addresses with programs called 'bots' (for 'robot') that automatically read thousands of web pages looking for email addresses. The NameOfList address above exists only in that paragraph - it isn't a real address. It gets lots of spam from bot harvested lists. Your webmaster can install code in your web pages that will disguise your address to hide if from bots.
• A simple and free solution to having to post your email address on your site, newsgroups or forums is to write it so humans understand but the harvesting robots don't. Using YourAddress AT YourDomain.com is enough to fool most robots. Variations include YourName@NOSPAM.YourDomain.com or on your own site something like YourAddress AT This Web site. People will figure out how to email you.
Avoid obvious names for your address. Some spammers don't bother paying for lists, they send mail to names like mail, info, sales, webmaster, contactus, john, jane, joe, cathy to every Web site. Enough of them get through to make it worth their time. A less common address like MailForPaul, DeniseInSales or Joe1976 won't get that spam.
• Choose an ISP or email provider that includes a spam filter free with your email account. They'll be able to eliminate a lot of spam before it gets to you. But, you can't rely on their filter alone. To prevent the filter from stopping legitimate email, the ISP has to let a lot of questionable email go through.
• Purchase and install a good spam filter software program. Having your own program will let you set rules that apply specifically to your situation Most of us will immediately block any email containing an offer for Viagra. But, doctors and pharmacists may actually want to see those emails. Our favorite anti-spam software is Webroot's Spam Shredder (More Info - Purchase. It is an inexpensive, easy to install program that moves suspicious email into its own folder. It will automatically detect and configure Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora email accounts. If you use a different email program, there's an easy to use manual setup. Spam Shredder 'learns' to recognize what you consider spam as you mark messages to delete or in rare cases, tell it to stop blocking messages you want to see. Within a few days, spam in your inbox is very rare.

Our favorite spam filter is Webroot's Spam Shredder. Spam Shredder auto-detects and configures Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora email accounts for immediate relief from spam. If you use another email program, Spam Shredder has an easy to use manual configuration for other POP3 email client programs (Spam Shredder does not work with web-based email accounts).

Already pre-educated to sort some desired messages from spam email, the smart learning engine studies your decisions to keep or delete spam to more effectively sort future email. Whitelist and Blacklist features let you identify email that should be immediately delivered or instantly deleted. Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora users can instantly import their contact list into the Whitelist. Webroot Spam Shredder quarantines suspected spam before it reaches your inbox, and messages can be deleted or safely held for later review. The spam threat database is regularly updated to protect you from the latest spam tactics as they emerge. You can specify your desired level of protection from spam and the size and type of messages to scan with Webroot Spam Shredder's easy-to-use controls.