How to fight junk email

What is junk email? It is the electronic equivalent of the letters that flood your mailbox promising anything from get rich quick schemes, miracle cures, or even ads for certain stocks or investments. They usually masquerade as reputable firms, going so far as impersonating government agencies or major corporations.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

There are ways to prevent the deluge of junk email from flooding you mailbox. These are the tips that we recommend to users.

• *Never* reply to a piece of Junk Email, even if they promise to remove you from their mailing list. All you are doing by replying to their message is confirming to them that your email address is valid. Once your email address is verified as valid, it will be sold on a list, making your junk mail problem even worse.
• Consider investigating the filtering abilities of your email program. Many modern email programs, including Outlook Express which is shipped with the package, will allow you to filter out messages based on keywords, Subject lines, or sender's email address.
• When posting to Usenet Newsgroups, do not include your real email address in the message.

More information about junk email can be found at:

• http://spam.abuse.net
• http://www.cauce.org
• http://www.spamfree.org