What is SPAM? It's those annoying, offensive e-mail advertisements, "Get $$Rich Stuffing Envelopes at Home!" that clutter up your mailbox and cost you time as well as money to sort through.

SPAM also extends to pornography. It's this kind of uninvited e-mail that offends citizens of the web even more. Yet any proposal to restrict these activities terrifies us, lest we inadvertantly throw the baby out with the bathwater, and lose our constitutional right to free speech in the process.

While the aptly name bozo-filters attempt to treat the symptoms of this malaise, they make no headway towards solving the problem itself, and the problem is getting a whole lot worse.

We don't begrudge any adult the right to peruse frisky pictures if that's what amuses them, (albeit on their own time and on their own machine).

But......

1. We don't want porno ads in our e-mail, and we sure don't want the photos that arrive with it.
2. We don't want graphic text descriptions of porno site offerings on public search sites.
3. And we don't want children forcibly subjected to this garbage either.

It's about time that some common sense prevailed, don't you think?
And maybe a solution or two, while we're at it.

So we're going to do a couple of things for you here.

FIRST:
We're going to list the search engines which continue to return an overwhelming number of pornography links to you and your kids. If the company chooses to insult you, don't go there.

SECOND: Instructions to help prevent trash from landing in your e-mail in-box right now.

Many thanks to Netscape for providing this filter on their browsers:

1. Go to E-mail
2. Create a new folder for spam trash to land in.
WHY? You'll want to verify that you're not accidentally tossing any important stuff out with the garbage.

Here's how you make a new folder:
On your overhead toolbar, click FILE, then click NEW FOLDER. A box will appear. In the blank space type SPAM, then click the dropdown arrow that says "choose as a subfolder of", and select INBOX. Click OK.

3. On your overhead toolbar, click on COMMUNICATOR, select MESSENGER
4. Select EDIT, click MESSAGE FILTERS
5. Click NEW
6. In the window that opens, you will be asked for a Filter name. Type in SPAM.
7. In the first box on the left, select "to or CC".
8. In the field that says "contains", click the dropdown arrow and select "doesn't contain"
9.In the blank field to the right, type in your own e-mail address.
10.The field that says "Move to folder" should be left alone.
11. In the drop down window next to that, select the new folder you just created for Spam
12. Click OK


Now we're going to create additional filter profiles.
The first one, which we named SPAM, specified what we DON'T want tossed out, which was mail addressed to you personally at your e-mail address. (most spam is sent to multiple recipients simultaneously) Now we'll tell your machine what you do want dumped .

1. On your overhead e-mail toolbar choose EDIT, then select MESSAGE FILTERS,
When the box appears, click NEW
2. When you select NEW, you'll get another selection box.
You'll do two or three of these for each filter. We called them SPAM2, SPAM3, etc.


3. In the Filter name box, you are going to select the next name.
THIS TIME YOU TELL THE MACHINE WHAT YOU DO WANT THROWN OUT.
4. Select "body" of the message, because spammers use anything in their subject line.
5. Select "contains"
6. Select keyword to exclude. A word likely to be found in the body of an offensive message.
You will likely end up repeating the same process two or three times, for specific filters.
Filter name SPAM3 might be programmed like so: "body" of the message "contains" SEX
Filter name SPAM4 might be programmed like so: "body" of the message "contains" EARN
Filter name SPAM5 might be programmed like so: "body" of the message "contains" INVEST

You will be able to click on your new SPAM folder in order to verify that it is catching the correct type of files.

Remember to periodically dump contents of your spam folder. Before you do it however, remember to unclick your "View Attachments Inline".

Netscape's e-mail filters work well and they work immediately.
Microsoft Explorer's e-mail filters are also effective.

THE QUESTION IS:
Why aren't smut filters pre-installed, with a user preference to UN-install?.

If the answer is important to you, speak up.
Contact your SOFTWARE company, your CABLE company, the COMPUTER MANUFACTURER who buys and bundles pre-installed software, your ISP.
Ask to speak with a senior executive, and ask that question.

If decision makers who enable smut and spam to enter your home get enough calls, they might remember that its customers like you who determine the value of their stock.

Switch your business to companies who respect YOU.