Fighting Spam For Dummies

If you have e-mail, you have spam—that annoying electronic junk mail that jams your inbox, sometimes makes you blush, and takes a lot of the fun out of your online experience. Spam wastes thousands of hours and costs you, the recipient of the stuff you don’t want, thousands of dollars in increased costs that your Internet service provider eventually passes along to you. In fact, a European survey in 2001 revealed that spam costs about $9.4 billion each year!

Spammers spam because they’re not paying for it, you are. The good news is, you can fight back, and Fighting Spam For Dummies tells you how. Find out

• Where spam comes from
• How to set up spam filters
• How folders help filter out spam
• What additional programs can help
• Where—and how—to report spam
• How best to lobby for spam control

You’ll get the plai n-English explanation for activating any additional protection offered by your ISP, and discover how to make the best use of any spam filter that came with your e-mail program. Fighting Spam For Dummies will arm you with information about

• Making your address harder for spammers to grab
• Why simply hitting “delete” isn’t enough
• Tracking down the source of the spam
• What you can learn from e-mail headers
• How spam filters work—and why they aren’t foolproof
• Setting up the maximum level of filtration for your e-mail program and ISP
• What information your ISP needs when you report spam
• How—and how not—to complain
• Adding protection with POPFile
• Ways to protect your clients if you’re a network administrator

The ultimate solution to spam has yet to be found, but these Internet-savvy authors give you the tools to help level the playing field. They also offer some solid suggestions for anti-spam laws and how you can join the war on spam.