What is Spam? Well the general consensus is that "spam" is any unwanted email you receive. Companies get your email address through various methods and then send you an email advertising their product or service. When you look at the principle, what better form of advertising could there be. There is virtually no cost to you except maybe to purchase the list and then to generate the email. You just setup a group of email addresses and chose to send your email to everyone in that group and presto off it goes.

This is probably the cheapest form of advertising you can have. Many companies use it, and they should as a part of their total advertising budget. What has happened is that because it is so cheap every Tom, Dick and Harry use it. Much of the material you receive is unwanted and many times it is objectionable material to the receiver.

A question arises. We have the Constitutional right to advertise our business or service. I think that is called "Freedom of Speech". My problem is that much of this material I receive I did not ask for or for that matter do not want. The come back is, so what, just delete it, you dont have to read it. That may be true, but what if one of my children sees it first. Here in lies the problem.

This article will not solve this issue. The only choice you have at the present time is to use some sort of "Spam" blocker. Most of this software must be purchased by the consumer. I did not want it from the beginning, why do I have to buy something to stop something I didnt want in the first place. A discussion for some other time.

If you use Microsofts Outlook 2003 there is a spam filter built into the package. That makes it some what easier. There or other spam filters available on the market. You should look into them.

Now the problem I have with spam blocking software is that I must configure it to filter out certain email types, categories and words. I happen to use Outlook 2003. The filter is nice, but I have found that there have been instances that email I wanted was put into the filtered email category. So I have too view each email separately even the ones put into the Spam category to make sure that I dont miss any email. Using filters require you to periodically reconfigure the filters. Now I ask you, the time I spend first going through the spam filtered email and the configuration time, I have found that if I turn off the filters and just go through each and every email and delete the ones I dont want takes far less time.

All of my email is opened by me only so any objectionable email I just delete. This may not be an option for everyone. So maybe the filters are better for you.

This is a problem that I suppose will never go away. With the ability to advertise so cheaply there will always be someone that will attempt to circumvent the filters and send the email. No form of legislation will completely solve this problem.

At the present time get out the check book and bite the bullet and buy some form of spam filtering software package. Look around there are many, many out there. Some are good and some are not so good. Ask your friends for recommendations, read a few magazine articles, what ever it takes. The employees at some of the retail stores have some knowledge in this area ask them.

This is one of several articles I have written in the Computer field. I have been in the computer industry for over 15 years. I love it and now I am branching out. Unwanted intrusions to computrs is an area of interest and concern to me. My name is Chuck Stephens and I can be reached at cstep@3rdm.net. No web site or anything to sell yet.