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 is only going to get worse.

Many of you have asked if there is any sure-fire cure for all this junk email that we receive right now and any more that may appear this year.

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. 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.

The big problem in using ANY email filter system is that they may cause blocking of legitimate email.

Basically, you can set up filters to remove email that comes from a specific email address or set it up to block email which contains certain key words in either Subject section or in Body of message.

The worst part of this situation is that spammers are very clever people and they are using all of their knowledge to get their message onto our desktops whether we want it or not.

For example, this week hidden among all of my usual get-rich quick schemes and penis enlargement information was an email from a porn site that literally took control of my desktop.

As soon as email message was highlighted in my Outlook Express window, it launched a web page that took up entire screen of my computer.

There it was on my 21" monitor, for whole world to see it if they were looking over my shoulder, a lusty, busty women crouched on her knees with her arms pressing together her breasts to overly exaggerate obvious and her legs spread so far apart you could see her most intimate body parts in all of their powder pink glory.

I am a man with a healthy love for women but I do not appreciate having this sort of thing forced on me because someone wants me to give them my money in exchange for pornographic pictures.

As far as I am concerned, these are "Terroristic Tactics".

My computer and I were held hostage by use of HTML source code that includes script language that launches a window to view their web page.

Worse still, window is one that takes up entire computer screen and does not have usual buttons on upper right hand corner to minimize or close window.

And, it might even include command to keep popping open even more windows on your desktop at set intervals that can literally freeze up your computer!

What can you do to fight back?

Whether this problem occurs via reading your email or if you are trapped into it while visiting a web site, there are a few things you can do short of ripping power cord out of wall.

First of all, Federal Trade Commission, FTC, http://www.ftc.gov/, takes a very dim view of anyone that tries to force you to view any material you do not wish to view, be it advertising or pornography.

In a recent action by Federal Trade Commission, they