You can get upset or you can take more proactive measures to prepare yourself.

Don't rely on fact that you are innocent.

Your innocence or guilt usually has no bearing on outcome.

It's no comfort knowing you are innocent, if your site is shut down or you lose your mailing list.

There are some simple steps you can take to protect your business.

1. Find out your ISP's spam policy.

Some providers will close your account on first complaint proven or unproven. If this is your providers policy, look for one that will take time to investigate.

It's too late once your account has been closed.

2. Use a marketer friendly list service to host your opt in list.

Fellow marketers usually know how rampant false complaints are and won't shut down your list without hearing your side of issue.

3. Back up your list daily.

It takes time and effort to build a solid list. Don't let it disappear overnight.

Analysts predict that volume of email on Internet, most of it junk, will grow another 50 percent in 2002.

That is a lot of email!

With estimates that number of Internet users is nearing 1 billion mark, amount of email floating around Internet will only continue to increase.

The question many people want to ask is, "Are there any sure-fire cures for all this junk email that we receive right now and any more that may appear in coming years?"

The short answer - Yes.

Make good use of your delete button! :-)

The long answer is - No.

No, there is no 100 percent cure for spam that plagues us all, X-rated or not. Not even pending federal legislation will make a significant dent on all that junk. But there are several ways to try and alleviate this problem.

Most email programs, including Microsoft's Outlook Express, have custom filtering features that are built into program but which are, more often than not, very much unused.