[skyguy79]

I've given up worring about the spam I received long ago. Most efforts are just not effective enough and some even risk your losing emails that you do want. What I did instead was download a free program called Mailwasher where I can review a basic form of my emails and delete those that are not wanted before actually downloading my emails to my regular email program. The program identifies know and potential spam messages and you add those that you identify as spam for future checks but were not already marked. You can even bounce messages as undeleverable if you want, but I don't generally recommend it as you see below. Learn more at Mailwasher Free Spam Filter Software: The Reliable Free Spam Blocker | MailWasher - Mailwasher Free.

Originally Posted by l2ridehd

Most e-mail have a "spam" button so just highlight the e-mail and click on the spam icon.

When I was the administrator for a fairly large fraternal website, I setup an opt-in, opt-out mail list and the only service that I was aware of at that time was AOL that had a spam button. If you have one and use it, please be very careful in it's usage. You can create a headache for webmasters at sites that are not spam sites. Let me explain further.

I had a number of our members that accidentally hit the spam button because the dumb-dumb's at AOL placed the spam button right next to the normal delete button. When the member accidentally hit the spam button instead of delete, AOL would then notify our web service where our site was housed. They in turned had to place a block or restriction on us or face AOL's black listing their web servers. A real headache for webmasters for sure that get hit with AOL's questionable practice. It was like a nightmare for me when it happened, especially the first time it did.

Originally Posted by Bonny

I have a "bounce back to sender" option with I e-mail program. Sometimes I'll use that. When they get it back, they think they are blocked or the e-mail address is wrong.

Bounce back might work with a few sites, but bouncing back for most have one or two effect:

1. No effect because no human ever sees or finds out that their message bounced, nor do they care if it did.
2. The bounce back is used to take ownership of your address. By ownership I mean for mailing lists purposes. They can then legally and legitmately sell you email addres in list to spammers. This is how a lot of spam messages get out there along with you email address being publicly listed on blogs, message boards and other places where they can harvest you address by use of what's called spiders. Spiders are out there constantly, but thankfully they are usually harmless and good firewall software, which most of us now have on our computer as well as web sites, do a good job of protecting us from any intrusions including spiders.

Don't be afraid of what I've told you. Good protection is provided by the programs like Norton, McAfee and numerous other programs unless... you don't have one installed or kept updated.