The Curse of Spam

Are you as plagued by the dreaded spam as I am? Everyone these days seems to just accept it as part of online life but I for one have had enough! Time to fight back!

I have noticed a huge increase in it in the past year. Up until then I used to get a few each day, maybe 3-5. But now there's not a day when my inbox doesn't contain at least 15 and more often than not 20 or even more spam emails. Sorting through them is both annoying and time consuming. They take the form of everything from Viagra ads to oil prices and stocks and shares. I can't understand the stocks and shares emails at all; you get the same e-mail supposedly from different people. The thing is these particular ones don't even seem to be selling anything, or want anything! So it puzzles me as to why they even bother.

Then there are the ones from the poor soul whose father in Africa has just died a millionaire, but he is having difficulty getting the money out of the country! And this is where you come in. You know, I'm beginning to believe that some people actually fall for this; is it possible?!

So what can you do? Well the only thing to do once it's in your inbox is to hit the delete button. Never reply as they will then know your e-mail address is genuine. Of course your deleted items folder will soon clog up so remember to empty it.

Also be careful who you sign up with for newsletters. Though by and large I find most "genuine" companies and home businesses trying to sell you something are fairly genuine about not distributing your e-mail address, also you can safely "unsubscribe" from them after a while.

Finally however I was sick of just deleting them, so I succumbed to a trial version of Mailwasher, a programme designed to greatly improve your e-mail spam problem. I even signed up for the pro version so I would have the full facilities. It wasn't expensive and is worth every cent I spent on it. Believe me, the spam will never hit your inbox again, as this programme intercepts it at your server. Have a look at it here:

http://fta.firetrust.com/index.cgi?id=hawthorn&campaign=blog

For now anyway, I'm winning the war. Then of course there's identity theft but that's for another day....