Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE), often called spam mail or junk mail, has become the scourge of the Internet. Some published reports claim that 65% of all e-mail on the Internet is unwanted junk mail. For some of us, I suspect the percentage is higher than that.
I have known some people who actually changed their e-mail addresses just because of spam mail problems. They hope to escape the flood of spam mail. That turns out to be an ineffective change, however. The new e-mail address will eventually grow to have the same problem. Instead, there are methods of deleting 100% of the spam mail from your present in-box before you ever see the junk.
For example, I have several e-mail addresses for different purposes. Altogether, I receive a total of about 300 unwanted spam mail messages every day. Yet I do not see a single one. At the same time, all of the e-mail messages that I do want to receive pass through the system and reach my in-box. The method that I use is very reliable.
Several companies offer products that claim to reduce or eliminate the unwanted junk from your in-box. These products are designed to filter out the spam. Most spam filters look for certain words or phrases or use Bayesian analysis techniques. Unfortunately, these are never 100% perfect. Sometimes the spam filters let junk mail through. Even worse, they also sometimes delete the good mail. That can be disastrous.
Did someone claim they sent you an e-mail but you never received it? Are you missing a newsletter that you subscribe to? Blame the spam filters, either the ones in your computer or those in your mail provider's mail server. (All mail servers these days have spam filters. The e-mail providers have to install spam filters in order to handle the crushing load of junk mail.)
Luckily, there are simple solutions available that work well for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux users alike. A few solutions will never, ever delete a "good" e-mail and yet will delete 100% of the unwanted stuff. Best of all, at least one of these 100% reliable spam mail solutions is available free of charge. More sophisticated solutions are available for a fee.
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