Spam, a minor nuisance two years ago, has increased to epic proportions. Nearly 40 percent of all Internet e-mail is unsolicited and unwanted—up from 8 percent in late 2001, according to Brightmail, a company that blocks spam for many of the leading ISPs. Jupiter Research, which tracks Internet activity, claims the average e-mail user received 2,200 spam messages over the past year.

A fine line exists between putting restrictions on worthless and annoying junk e-mail (or even forcing such messages to be prefixed by the header ADV, for advertisement) and banning the distribution of information that has the potential to be socially valuable. Direct marketers make the point that eliminating spam entirely limits consumer choices and the free market. It also restricts the potential success of small companies that can't afford more expensive types of marketing. The lack of consensus on the legal definition of spam (is it essentially unsolicited, bulk, or commercial mail?) makes this problem even trickier.

CAUCE (the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, www.cauce.org) largely opposes the popular opt-out solution, pointing out that it won't improve the current state of spam and might even make the situation worse. "If you pass a law that says you're free to send spam until someone asks to be removed, you're essentially giving the green light to everyone who's ever wanted to send e-mail to anybody in the country," says attorney Ray Everett-Church, founding member of the volunteer organization. Additionally, a recent FTC study showed that more than 50 percent of tested opt-out e-mail addresses given were invalid.

Perhaps the toughest nut to crack is that much spam isn't sent from a domestic source. After all, how will the law ever stop spam coming from Russia or Taiwan? Evidently it's going to take a worldwide resolution against spam rather than simply a domestic one, and that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. Individuals and business owners will be better off making room in their budgets for antispam protection, rather than waiting for a legal solution. Technology has a better chance of catching up with the problem than the law does.

Top Anti-spam Tips

1. Guard your in-box. Don't give out your e-mail address to anyone but the people you actually expect to correspond with. For dealing with everyone else, see tips 2 through 4.
2. Use free Web mail accounts. For merchants and legit others you don't correspond with regularly, use Web mail, such as Hotmail's or Yahoo!'s. You can abandon it if it gets spammed. Many have spam filtering built in.
3. Use a disposable e-mail address. The premise is simple: When, for example, an online merchant asks for your e-mail address, you just use the service to generate a disposable one. The service then forwards any e-mail sent to this address to your real e-mail account. If the disposable address gets spammed, you can simply close it. As a bonus, if you use multiple addresses and keep track of which one you give to whom, you'll know who's to blame if you start receiving spam at any of your addresses. At that point, you have to decide whether to trust the source of the legitimate mail with a new disposable address or not. Some of the disposable address services do a better job than others of helping you associate addresses with the accounts on which you've used them. But there are other things to consider: If someone sends you a message on a disposable account and you reply to it, you will probably end up disclosing your real address in the From: field. 
4. Use fake addresses. Most Web-based sign-up forms require an e-mail address, but ask yourself, do they really need it? If you don't want to hear from the site (and don't need a confirmation e-mail or tech support), don't give a real address.
5. Don't post your address. Resist the impulse to post it on Web sites, guest books, contact lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, and so on; spammers harvest from these places. If you absolutely must reveal yourself, use a Web-mail account or a DEA. You can also put something extra in your e-mail that humans will know how to read but harvesting robots won't: you@yourdomain.com could become youATyourdomainDOTcom.
6. Don't answer spam. Ever. You won't stop spam by writing to the spammers, even if you ask nicely. At best, you'll flame a robot, which won't mind. At worst, you'll confirm that your e-mail address belongs to a naive human being—a valuable commodity for spammers. Ignore the "remove me" e-mail addresses, too. Many of these lead to dead or inactive e-mail addresses.
7. Opt out. When you do sign up for or buy something online and you have to give out an e-mail address, remember to opt out of everything you're not absolutely sure you want to receive.
8. Read the privacy policy. Make sure you understand what a Web site promises to do (and not to do) with your e-mail address. If there's no privacy policy, see tips 2 through 4.
9. Use a spam filter. Even if you follow tips 1 through 8, you're going to get spam. If you get more than you can handle. Some personal spam filters are listed below. Our choice for ease of use and accuracy is MailWasher