Key points from a Consumer Reports article on SPAM By Peter M. Abraham July 2003 The August 2003 issue of Consumer Reports has an article titled, E-MAIL SPAM:  How to stop it from stalking you. I would like to point out some key points from this article to hopefully help explain why SPAM and fighting SPAM is big news: Between February and April alone, according to America Online (AOL), the maximum number of messages that spammers logged towards the service's 35 million customers in a single day tripled, to 2.4 billion. AOL averages 7 million complaints daily about spam that reaches customers. In Japan, cell-phone spam is widespread; roughly one-sixth of NTT DoCoMo customers surveyed said they receive one to five cell phone spams daily. Just looking at America Online (AOL), the number of daily spam e-mails detected and blocked has been on an upward trend. Approximately 500 million spam messages were blocked in the first quarter of 2002. In the second quarter of 2003 they are blocking approximately 2,500 million spam messages per day. The article provided the following eight ways to block spam: Do not buy anything promoted by spam.  Even if the offer isn't a scam, you are helping to finance spam. If your e-mail program has a "preview pane," disable it to prevent the spam from reporting to the sender that you've received it. Use one e-mail address for family and friends, and another for everyone else.  Or pick up a free one from Hotmail, Yahoo!, or a disposable forwarding address.  When the address attracts too much spam, abandon it for a new one. Use a provider that filters email. Report spam to your ISP.  To help the FTC control spam, forward it to uce@ftc.gov ("uce" stands for unsolicited commercial e-mail). If you receive a spam that promotes a brand, complain to the company behind the brand by postal mail, which makes more of a statement than e-mail. If your e-mail program offers "rules" or "filters," use one to spot messages that might be spam. Install a firewall if you have cable, DSL or other forms of broadband so a spammer cannot plant software on your computer to turn it into a spamming machine. The article also pointed out some mistakes to avoid: Posting your e-mail address on a public web page such as eBay.  If you need to do so, display your address as a graphic image, not text. Using your regular e-mail address in a chat room. Clicking on an e-mail's "unsubscribe" link.  That informs the sender you're there.  Don't do it unless you trust the sender. Disclosing your address to a site without checking its privacy policy.  Do not forget to uncheck the "check boxes" that grant the site or its partners permission to send you anything nonessential. Forwarding chain letters, petitions, or virus warnings.  All could be a spammer's ploy to collect addresses.