Remember from part one, we are not talking about those folks who pick veggies out of garden in fall. This is definitely NOT an episode from Martha Stewart, although I'm curious to know how get my tomatoes to stop bruising, ooops, sorry got a little side tracked for a moment! It happens to best of us, espicially when you're weeding (pardon pun) through all that spam trying to find your "real" email messages.

You know important stuff, that really does need your FULL attention. And half time you can't find it because it's buried under all that JUNK MAIL, I know how you feel, somedays I'd like to run to highest mountain and SCREAM my head off. Maybe they'd listen, cause I sure as heck don't get a response when I'm screaming at them through computer. (You're not only one huh?)

Hopefully, someone will invent a system where you can talk to email that comes in, person sending can hear you right at that moment. That'd be awesome eh? Someone sends you some spam and you CAN tell them what is on your mind! You know, HOW you "really" appreciate their message. Although, I do NOT think we'd get much work done, cause we'd be too busy cussing them all out.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people online that all have many misconceptions regarding Spam Filters. Today I'm going to answer some questions that people have asked me about my "Spam column" for DEMC Small Business Ezine regarding them. With regards to spam filters, one can never have enough knowledge, so I do hope that this article will clear up any misconceptions that you may have.

1. Don't spam filters ONLY apply to those who have NOT opted in?

This is indeed a very sad misconception, Spam Filters do affect EVERYONE who sends and receives email in some way or another. Whether you publish a FREE ezine OR a PAID ezine, it does not matter, if it is being sent by email it affects YOU. The biggest problem with filters is that they have NO way to detect that email message is in fact "Optin", they actually base it on your headers.

Should you use a third party list server, your chances of being filtered are even greater, because of that reason. And this is how ALL filtering is based: By looking at headers in your email message, by using a point system based on contents in your subject line as well as body.

This can also be done by subscribing to a blacklist service that will provide them with a list of domains or hosts that have been identified as being used by spammers -such as http://www.spamhaus.org or http://mail-abuse.org/ AOL, Verizon and Accessus are widely known for using services such as these. It should also be known that spam filtering programs MAY also subscribe to these services, some do and some do not.