Meindert Sprang wrote:

This is indeed becoming a serious problem. We have some customers from the
USA that are with Verizon. And guess what? Verizon categorically blocks all
e-mail traffic from Europe and Asia. The result: people asking us support
questions but our answers never reach them.....

Many people don't understand that they can usually access their mail
server, review the pending deletions, and tweak their settings and
filters.

I expose my email to collection by spammers in numerous places like eBay
and newsgroups. It is a personal choice but I elect to not complicate
the process of people sending me email by anti-spamming my email
address. And I normally won't make any attempt to communicate with
people that do. It is just too much trouble to bother with it.

I receive an average of about 30-50 spams a day. Those are, for the
most part, filtered into a junk folder for my review. I look at the
subject and delete most of them, I occasionally find a keeper in with
them.

I also go to my ISP's mail server (via web mail) once or twice a week
and review the spam that have been put into the spam folder there and
not been sent to me. I may have 100 or more every 2-3 days.

I read the email addresses and the subject's and occasionally the body
of 1 or 2. I occasionally (1 in 500? less?) find a keeper and mark it
for delivery and approve the sender for future email. Then all are
marked for deletion and trashed. If I don't do it, it will happen
automatically based on time and the volume of the stored emails.

The world is an ugly place, enforcing anti-spam rules internationally is
not possible. Not yet, and maybe never will be. I never, no
exceptions, ever, follow up on a spam offer no matter how interesting or
enticing it sounds.

It's too bad GWB did not elect to start a war on spam instead of
terrorism. We would have not been likely to win but at least we would
not have lost thousands of lives in that struggle.

Anybody read the children s classic "The Emperor's New Clothes" lately?
We need to get about 26 millions copies of that sent to the White House.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)