Spam - What are the Options?

When you first got your email address you hardly ever got spam. Besides the periodic chain-letter - almost all the mail you got was stuff you wanted.

Now, six years later, almost all you get is spam. Every morning there are about 140 junk mail messages. Your Outlook email filter catches maybe 30% of that. What are your options?

Do Nothing
No downside, but no upside either. You won't lose any email - but you'll still keep getting that spam.

'Unsubscribe'
Spammers don't honor unsubscribe requests. This won't help.

Complain
You might get a few accounts shutdown - but it won't solve the problem. If you want to make a hobby out of it - be my guest. The underlying problem is that hundreds of spam senders already have your address. There's not really a way to turn back the clock.

Ditch Your Email Address
If this is practical it will certainly cut down on spam. The problem is that Susie or Joe may not know how to get a hold of you.

Change Your ISP
Some ISP's offer better anti spam filters than others. The problem with server-side filtering is that frequently you don't know what you've missed. There's not any way to readily review messages that your ISP thought was spam. On the upside - you never have to see any of it at all. Maybe ignorance is bliss.

Get a Client-Side Spam Filter
Client-side spam filters like SpamButcher can stop up to 98% of spam. You can easily review intercepted messages - to see if it accidentally caught anything you wanted. Many filters are available for trial as free anti spam downloads. Some filters work as Outlook spam software, others such as SpamButcher can work with almost any email client. SpamButcher has a no risk 21-day trial period.

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