Spam. Youve all heard of the crazy pink meat in a can, but whats it got to do with the Internet? Well, its also the namesake for a major problem in the World Wide Web-unsolicited junk email. Problem! Were talking serious pain in the butt both as a waster of time, space, and money. It is estimated that around half of all email received on the Internet is this sneaky illegal attempt at selling fake consumer goods, pornography, and a whole plethora of helpful services. Its taking up half of all email on the Earth, and its costing businesses billions in wasted time, as well as filling personal email accounts to the limit so important messages arent received. It seems everywhere theres a leap in technology for humanity, theres also a group of people who want to stretch the realm of criminal activity to another level.

The good news is that as its such a prominent problem, the good guys have made it a main priority on their To do lists. Software has been created to block Spam and is being updated constantly. Recently Bill Gates, richest human on Earth and self-made mogul of software masters Microsoft spoke of his aim to eliminate Spam by the year 2006. Obviously a lot of people would be quite appreciative if they could achieve this goal.

Supposedly most of the billions of junk emails originate from about 200 people who are intelligent enough to cover their tracks. They have multiple ways of finding out email addresses and then sending thousands upon thousands of unwanted messages to you and I. It usually costs them next to nil so if even one low-quality product sells they receive a profit. Thats why they do it; just another greed-induced means of getting rich quick without working for it like the rest of us.

Well, theres a couple main ways of dealing with the Spam dilemma. The main one, and most easy, is to just delete the messages or empty your folder (after moving desired messages to another folder) straight off the server without downloading or looking at the messages. This gives the evil sender the knowledge that youre not reading the mail and therefore the traffic you receive goes down dramatically.

Another way to block the Spam is to use software like Magic Mail Monitor (http://mmm3.sourceforge.net/) or Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.net/), which work well at destroying the unwanted, pink, tasteless, unworldly email meat by showing you the mail straight from the server without downloading it.

So, show the criminals youre aware and not ignorant and take the first steps to bringing the Spam Empire down. Protect yourself and eventually the Spam will go where all filth is destined, into the trash.