Our unabashed dictionary defines Spam as pinching bottom of a girl in a crowded street.

On a crowded elevator of a sky-scrapper of a computer giant, a shapely lass was pinched at her bottom. She turned back and growled, " Who is spamming me?" The handsome young man behind her looked at her in face and said, "Pardon me. I thought it was a safe address". "Never mind, I will opt in for your mail!" The girl replied smilingly as she was impressed with his looks and mannerism.

As you know spam (noun) means an unsolicited e-mail message sent to many recipients at one time, or a news article posted simultaneously to many newsgroups or lists.

Spam is a sort of junk mail. Generally contents of a Spam message or article are not relevant to topic of group or interests of recipient.

Spam is an abuse of Internet in order to distribute a commercial or religious or political message or publicity material to a huge number

of people at minimal cost.

Spambot means a program or device that automatically posts large amounts of repetitive or inappropriate material to newsgroups on Internet.

Here's a fairly extensive overview of resources that will aid you in effectively combatting unsolicited email, showing you possibilities (and, alas, limits!) of your endeavor.

General resources ----------------- The Spamhaus Project features a database tracks known Spam Gangs, Spam Support Services and providers who keep organized spamming alive by knowingly hosting stealth spamming services on their networks. An extensive set of databases allows for tracking of established spam outfits, including statistics, etc. < http://www.spamhaus.org/ >

Look up this list of established spambots: < http://mosa.unity.ncsu.edu/brabec/antispam.html >

Resources for header reading are listed at Forum for Responsible and Ethical E-mail (some broken links, though): < http://www.spamfree.org/resources/header_reading.html >

Some spambot harrassment programs are listed here: < http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/harassment.html >

Spam.abuse.net calls for spam boycots and offers lots of information an spam prevention legislation, and more. < http://spam.abuse.net/ > Read their useful guide titled "How To Complain To The Spammer's Provider" at: < http://spam.abuse.net/howtocomplain.html >

Mail forwarding services ------------------------ Protect your mail box with disposable email addresses by signing up with Sneakemail: this service forwards everything to your regular box without disclosing your real address. If you find your Sneakemail address is being abused, you can simply delete it. Plus, it will help you track down businesses that flog your address to third party marketers. Neat. < http://sneakemail.com/ >

Free email forwarding claiming to sport net's best anti-spam filters can be found at Despammed.com. Basically, it works as a remote spam filter. (That's why they term themselves a "mail filtration service".) < http://www.despammed.com/ >

Spamex takes a similar approach, offering disposable email addresses as a measure to counter spam. It doesn't bother with sophisticated spam filters, though - minute your Spamex address receives spam, simply nuke it and get a new one. You can also fit their log in box link into your web browser's links bar for facilitated access. Their slogan is noteworthy, too: "Because Sending You Email is a Privilege Not a Right!" < http://www.spamex.com/ >

One of best known anti-spam forwarders is Spammotel (what a name!) which also offers a pretty sophisticated, award winning plug-in for your email client, allowing you to keep track of whom you have given which email address of yours. This, of course, makes it dead easy to test web sites' privacy policy. Moreover, it makes for a great tool to help you organize e-mail you actually do want to receive. (Windows only.) < http://www.spammotel.com/ >

Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC offers a commercial spam protection forwarding service at: < https://stop.mail-abuse.org/ >

Spam filters ------------ Webmasters running their own mail server may be interested in The MAPS Relay Spam Stopper, a queryable DNS-based database of spam-relaying mail servers. You can configure your server to utilize their list if you want to refuse mail from these types of servers. < http://work-rss.mail-abuse.org/rss/ >

The same site offers Realtime Blackhole List (RBL). This is a system for creating intentional network outages ("blackholes") for purpose of limiting transport of known-to-be-unwanted mass e-mail. The RBL is a subscription-only system, working in such a manner that no one is denied connectivity to a non-RBLSM-subscriber. < http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/ >