OT: Spam Volume [Long]

Hi all, Let me delurk for a moment and relate my experience with spam. I don't think that I could even detect any increase in spam from being a member of the list unless it was really severe. (One thing I can point to that incresaed my load was someone from work got a PC and started giving humor/joke/funny-bits sites my address rather than sending me the link; make sure you tell friends *NEVER* give a site your address so they can "share" the experience with you.) I bought McAfee's SpamKiller 4 months ago and, except for trouble with my crappy dialup, look at it as a life-saver. I've been online with the same email address for over 8 years, and in the beginning was not as careful with it as I should have been. After running a couple of months to make sure I had a good lock on classifications, I ran SpamKiller for a week from an empty "killed" folder. After a week I had 600+ messages in the killed folder, which would have been more, if the phone line didn't keep conking out while SpamKiller downloaded and filtered the mailbox. I think in the last year I have seen everything there is to see in the way of spam, and if it weren't the fact that to stop the spam *I* would have to give up *my* email address (just because some people are stupid enough to respond to something that they receive in their inbox) I would give up and roll over. Overall I would rate SpamKiller a 7+, higher if used on a DSL or cable line (since if the line drops while it's downloading, it throws it out of kilter and it may not filter all messages...). Setup is a cinch, and it learns pretty quickly what to filter (filters available on sender's address, subject line, substring in message, or *entire domain*). Filter updates are downloadable that add/delete pre- defined filters (only minus: thay don't show deleted filters, so you never know why a filter would be deleted; and they don't say where the filters are defined [back channel from installations?]). Later, Frank PS. Some of my personal favorites are the "natural herbal products" that can add either 2 cup sizes or 3+ inches; the various incarnations of the Nigerian scam; and the kid that hides $71,000 in his closet after earning it sending out emails.... The latest one that's high- volume is the RC Mini Racers that are sold out at retail stores. John Lawson wrote: [ snip ] [ snip ] -- Join my distributed.net team: Cow County Crackers, at http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/tmsummary.php3?team=10621 RC5-64 was solved July 2002. Now on to 72!!!