SPAMMING is designed, to upset the Internet and E-mail system applecart, by using your valuable time and overload the World-Wide-Web.
The laws "stopping " the spam are NOT working, who is going to police it all ?
Admitted : some spammers are getting caught, and procecuted, but most of the professionals are getting away with it.
Most anti SPAM FILTER programs set up by ISP's have got the wrong effect as they also remove the wanted E-mails indiscreminately.

Just try and see if YOU can spot what is SPAM and what is legitimate E-mail, it is very difficult to sort that out effectively. 

The statistics  below,
have been collected from one E-mail ISP which was practically spamfree 18 months ago, until the ISP increased their E-mail storage tenfold.
I pay good money, for this E-mail address, but have now 25 to 50 Spam E-mails coming into my account daily.
The only way I can get E-mail into my INBOX, is to set up a whitelist for addresses I expect legitimate E-mails from.
The rest finishes up in the TRASH folder.
So I still have to check the E-mail in that section as well.
I tried to blacklist the spam addresses,but you soon get an enormous list of those, and most of them  are used one time only.

That  is why I set up a survey about SPAM.

What can be done to reduce SPAM ?
There is very little we can do to stop the spam arriving in our E-Mail boxes,
But we can certainly make it more difficult for the professional spammers, to send the spam onto the web.
Below I have set out some points to ponder if you are wishing to help reduce spam.

What measures can you take in your own computer ?

Get a paid E-mail address.    WARNING : If you are not using the internet, disconnect your modem !!! See below end of page.
There are plenty of good ISP's specialising in E-mailing.
Most of them are reasonably priced, and you have the advantage, that they will support you with any  problems you may have.
You look for one which offers you a multiple set of E-mail addresses, that way you can specialise where you want to receive your E-mails from different sources, an added advantage of this feature is, that you can reduce the bulk of the spam which somehow still arrives.

Give your E-mail address a name which is not attractive for the hackers, having -biz at the end is asking to be picked up as fair game.

Make sure you do not use the addressbook as offered by most E-mail ISP's.
The addressbook is a vulnerable point in the system when your computer happens to be compromised.
Put your important daily used E-mail addresses on a 3.5" floppy or a CD if you have a lot of them.
Just slip the disk or CD into your computer when you want access to your address listing.
And do not forget to take out the floppy when you have transferred the address you need,
as long as the disk or CD is in your computer, you are still vulnerable to hacking.

If you forward an E-mail to others, make sure you delete any listing of E-mail addresses they may have sent you !

When you reply to an e-mail, do the same; delete the list of E-mail addresses the sender has left for you.
Also, delete any part of the E-mail you do not need to have the answer recognised as coming from your correspondent.
If you keep everything they have sent, and they do the same when answering YOU,
then you finish up with very long E-mails after a few to's and fro's.

Does the ISP have a spamfilter then make sure that you still have access to all the E-mails you are getting.
Nothing is more annoying, than to find that you have missed an important E-mail which has been sent by one of your correspondents,
simply because the ISP considered it to be SPAM, and handled it accordingly. ( most SPAM filters test the subject line of the E-mail )

Never open an attachment when you are not sure if it contains a possible virus,
the safest way to handle attachments, is to transfer it to a floppy,
and check it with your virus-checker program,
before placing it in your main computer files.

Warning :
In today's day and age, some internet platforms are set up to connect your computer to the internet
                                                                                                                            when you boot up your computer.

If this is the case with YOUR computer,
make arrangements to leave the computer unconnected to the phone lines and the modem until you are ready to go on the internet, THEN connect up and key in your connection details.

This will prevent your computer from being used by the spammers without your knowledge when you are booting up.
Especially important if you are on broadband.
Your computer may have been compromised just before you finished  up your work for the day.