How do you fight spam on your computer (not forum spam)? I purchased a program called ChoiceMail One nearly three years ago and I've had great success with it. It's basically a program that contains a white list (people I want to receive e-mail from), a black list (people I don't want to receive e-mail from) and those that are in the middle (awaiting verification before going to either of the above two lists).

The way the program works is when e-mail is received from someone I don't know, the program sends that person a message asking them to go to an online form so they can request permission to send me e-mail. It's called permission based filtering. When you receive spam it is mostly sent by computers that can't respond to these types of requests. Most programs like this will automatically authorize the person based on the fact that they replied to that permission message. ChoiceMail however leaves it up to the person using the program if they want to accept or deny someone. I personally don't have that particular feature turned on. I didn't want family and friends getting strange messages about submitting further info just to e-mail me. However, every message I receive that is from someone that I don't know I have to decide where they go.

Since using this program since May of 2003, I have received 43,041 (87%) spam messages and only 6,453 (13%) legitimate e-mail messages. This program works in conjunction with your e-mail client (i.e. Outlook, etc.) so you still need to use a program like that to send and receive e-mail.

I highly recommend some form of spam filtering but I'm curious to find out what others do to block this annoying problem?

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Mark Blair
NowParenting - "Parenting Discussion Community"
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I dont really do anything special, other than create multiple email accounts. I have my own personal email account which is 100% spam free (after gmail's normal filter)...The reason it is 100% spam free is because I am very careful with who I give it to. If any part of me thinks that I might could receive spam or some form of advertisement from any person or company, they won't get my main email address. All other accounts (such as my school account and AF accounts simply forward to my main account)

well i guess i am like Ryan... i have about 5 e-mails ( i collected them over the years) but my gmail...no one gets (only family Ect...) and all my other just bulk e-mail from signing up to stupid sites go to my yahoo accounts...and all my e-mails from sites i want to get e-mail from go to my domain account... LOL but it keeps the spam down

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Outside of not responding to removal requests (since that just confirms your e-mail address), another thing everyone can do to help reduce spam is use the BCC feature in your e-mail client. Whenever I send out e-mail to several people, I put their names in the BCC field. That way nobody else can see who got the message and if some spam agent somehow gets a hold of that e-mail, they won't be able to see who received it. The problem is trying to get people that e-mail me to do the same thing.

I also have multiple e-mail accounts and most forward to accounts that I use on a regular basis.

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Mark Blair
NowParenting - "Parenting Discussion Community"
HostHideout - "Where Professionals Discuss Web Hosting"

I have a domain with with email forwarders set up. If I go to sign up for something that I really don't want to because it might cause some spam, I set up a forwarder to my main email address. Lets say I am going to sign up for the AdminFusion forum (I didn't do this as most forums don't cause spam if you turn off the email from other members option), I would use AdminFusion@mydomain.com. That email would forward to my main account, so I get it like normal. When I start getting spam, I can tell who it came from by which email address it is sent to. Then I just disable that forwarder and no more spam!

It works most of the time. The only problem is when I am too lazy to create another mail forwarder and use a previous one. Then one site sends spam and the other doesn't and I have to decide if I get enough important mail to make it worth keeping the forwarder, or disable it and loose both.

That's an interesting strategy, DZ, but it does seem like far too much work and management, at least for my purposes. It seems as if I am creating new accounts for forums...sites...products all day every day. The best strategy I have found to work is to have 2 personal accounts - one for spam, one for only those who I know. I just couldnt see myself creating a new email account for every site I register with.

DZ if i did that thay would have to put a limit on my e-mails and the sad part is i got unlimited

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I've done what Domainer Zone has done but not on a large scale. I've only created a few forwarders based on that reason. Sometimes I forget I created them though and I e-mail someone with a different address which could get added to their database/mailing list.

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Mark Blair
NowParenting - "Parenting Discussion Community"
HostHideout - "Where Professionals Discuss Web Hosting"

I also have multiple e-mail accounts. Depending where I sigh up at it depends what e-mail I use. I have one account which is a yahoo account before I used to use it all the time and I still get about 300 spams a day. I am not kidding! On a weekend when I sign in on Mondays I can have closed to 1500 sometimes. Look people, I can only order some many blue pills at once. You know that have a shelf life.

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lol...You can never have too many blue pills and penny stock!