While I’ve yet to meet someone who likes receiving spam, people’s level of frustration with this steady irritation varies greatly. Some of you have made peace with the plague. Some find that the filters you’ve put in place are adequate. Some nearly froth at the mouth when yet another intrusion lands in your inbox offering male enhancements, fraudulent low cost prescription drugs, phishes for your personal information with a notice that there is a problem with your bank account, or information that you’ve won a lottery you never entered. (And all you have to do is provide all your information, $89 dollars in "processing fees," and a pint of blood to redeem it.)

If you're among the enraged, consider using spamarrest^[1].

This program requires those who e-mail you to verify that they are a real person by entering the text shown on the page. Spam mail is sent by automated bots, so there's no human to type the word seen on the page. Consequently, it doesn’t get through. Any e-mail that does not pass the test does not land in your inbox. Period.

You can incorporate your existing address list so that everyone on it is automatically granted access and never challenged. People not on your list only have to answer the challenge once to be validated for all future e-mails.

Any e-mail from those who are not verified is stored in a special folder for a week. This gives you the chance to review the messages in case you want to accept any. Spamarrest allows you to try its service free for a month before you purchase a subscription.

Linda