Tony Summers wrote:
> We have a policy of ignoring spam.
Which you are of course free to do, but that is not the only option. There
are a number of means of avoiding spam in the first place, filtering out
spam, and fighting spam. They all take time. In order to automate reporting
spam to spamcop.net, I bought Spam Deputy, although I am not particularly in
the habit of buying software on the web. I also started filtering, using
Outlook's rules to check for certain keywords in the body and in the header.
Those I miss, I may take a few seconds to look at, to see if there is
something I could have filtered against. If our server simply filtered out
email that passed thru an open relay, that would eliminate the bulk of the
spam I get.

> To reply to any
> unsolicited email only confirms the validiity of your email address.
That is indeed true. You may never get that particular spam again, but now,
your address can either be resold, or reused by the same "Internet marketer"
for other "advertising campaigns". Spammers now seem to be hawking their
services as a means for small businesses to advertise. Some of them
understand that they paid someone to spam, and some seem not to.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com

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