According to publication 'Messaging Today' (2000 Electronic Mailbox Report - Feb. 21, 2001), "Email is most successful communications technology since television, and in a few years will even surpass that. There are currently more than 891 million email accounts in use Worldwide and 440 million in U.S. alone - with an average of more than 4 email accounts per person."

While more than 200 million of us use and enjoy email, there are a few thousand people abusing system and damaging communication potential of email for rest of us.

SP^AMMERS ARE THE ENEMY OF US ALL!

The most common forms of email abuse are as follows:

- Using email harves^ters (software which gathers email addresses from Internet for purpose of sending sp^am messages). - Selling addresses gathered from an actual opt-in email list to someone who recipient did not give contact permission to personally. - Buying Mil^lions CD's and then requiring people to opt-out of email, rather than to opt-in to email. - Providing remove addresses that do not work.

Generally, persons using these sp^am techniques are morons who are simply too lazy to learn how to develop an honest online business or too impatient to build a business that will last a lifetime. Let us not forget that "moron" is key word here since a sp^ammers business will not generate enough income to justify cost of doing business outlaw way.

LAZY LIVES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE STREET!

Sp^ammers sp^am because they are too lazy to build an online business old-fashioned way --- with honesty and integrity.

As a result of sp^ammers obnoxious laziness, public has been confronted with growing nuisance of hundreds of sp^am messages in their email boxes on a daily basis! I have filtered more than 100 pieces per day to my trash bin, and I still receive another 200 plus messages per day that I have not set up filters for yet.

While I will admit that sp^ammers are truly annoying, I must confess that general public has created new problems for all of us! In war against sp^am, email account holders constantly suggest that their ISP's must deal with sp^am issue for them.

ISP'S RESPOND

By putting responsibility of controlling sp^am on shoulders of ISP's, rather than hitting delete key ourselves, we have opened a whole new can of worms.

In truth, ISP's cannot do too much to stem tide of sp^am. Yet, with so many angry customers, ISP's felt a strong need to find some kind of solution to problem.

ISP's had one of two options:

- RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/ - Installing Email Filters

Neither is a perfect solution to sp^am problem... In fact, both are actually very poor solutions to sp^am problem!

HOW SP^AM FILTERS WORK

To understand quandary created by use of filters in war against sp^am, we must first understand how sp^am filters work.

It is important to understand that filters are actually software applications.

Software is not intuitive!

While a few software applications may seem intuitive, illusion exists only because mind of programmer was able to foresee your desires for use of software.

Filtering software exists only as a set of rules to determine likelihood of a message being sp^am. Here is an outline of some of basic rules that sp^am filtering software follows:

1. If origination email server is different from email server of sender's default email address, then it is likely sp^am. 2. If email is delivered to more than 25 people, it is likely sp^am. 3. If email originates from a specific server, then it is likely sp^am. (This is only rule that RBL follows.) 4. If email originates from a specific country TLD (top-level domain), then it is likely sp^am. 5. If certain words appear in Subject or Email Body, then it is likely sp^am. (This is where real problems begin!)

THE PANDORA'S BOX OF THE SP^AM WARS

ISP's who choose filter option will either install a filter on incoming email only, outgoing email only or a combination of both.

With fifth basic rule in sp^am filtering software that most ISP's use, each ISP has a list of "sp^am words" that software scans for.

A few of simpler, more obvious "sp^am words" follow:

- H^GH - D^VD - C^asino - G^ambling - P^orn - M^illion - B^illion - V^iagra

The first time I had experienced ugly filter problem was with my first ezine. My ezine was a computer support publication and upon introduction of a major v^irus, I tried to send instructions to my list on how to identify v^irus and to repair its damage. Unfortunately, my list server had blocked all messages that mentioned name of virus. (Never mind that actual payload email never mentioned given name for v^irus!)

When it comes right down to it though, sometimes you really have to laugh at some of garbage they send. According to spammers not only do I need viagra, I also need an enlargement for a body part I don't even have. I some how also managed to request this information at one of their sites, not once, but 200 freakin' times.

We all have our incoherent days, but I think I would at least get drift after first 100 times. And really now, like I am going to send a spammer my credit card info in an email! Like I said, we all have our incoherent days, but I am sure as heck NOT that darn incoherent at ANY time. Even if a web site doesn't use a "secure" server -I'm NOT buying and there's no two ways about it, let alone in an email.

Seriously, like how stupid do these people really think we are? "Laurie how would you like to harvest millions of email addresses a day?" Whoo-Hoo! I better jump right on that one, so my web host can shut me down and I can lose EVERYTHING I've worked so hard for in last 3 plus years. Yeah I will get right on that one.