Unwanted or unsolicited E-mail is refereed to as Spam. E-mail that you did not request is sent to you either for commercial reasons or from other equally annoying sources. You can set up filters with your E-mail reader (Netscape, MS Outlook, Eudora, etc.) to either delete incoming mail or send it to a selected folder which you can then review it before deleting. But you should also send a complaint to the E-mail postmaster of the offender in an effort to get that account shut down. The web sites listed at the bottom of this page will help you identify the spammer and send the correct complaint.
 

FILTERING

Internet users, especially on commercial sites such as AOL and Earthlink, are often subjected large amounts of spam. Setting up filters in your E-mail reader to block either the sender or the subject is your first defensive step.

In Netscape, select Edit | Message Filter... | New...
You will get the filter dialog box. Name the specific filter. For example, if you are getting msgs. from a specific mail server or user, then you want to filter that user or server completely. You might use that user or server as the filter name.

Then pull down the menu and select not "subject", but "sender" in the the window. After contains enter either the user name of the servername (the part after the @ in the E-mail address).

Now you have to decide if you want to either automatically delete the spam, or send it to a folder from the Inbox for review first. In the then window either select "Move to folder" or "delete". If you select the former, you probably want to create a new folder called Spam and send all suspected spam to it first. If you get only spam from this server, just use the delete option.

Finally you can post a short description of what this type of spam was so that later you might decide to remove the filter or change its properties. You may end up creating many filters, so any info you have on each filter will help you track them later.
 

Helpful Anti-Spam Web Sites

Fight Spam on the Internet

Fighting E-mail Spammers, by Todd Burgess, includes specific steps you can take to notify the appropriate E-mail postmaster.

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)

Computer graphic by K. Ballash. All other graphics downloaded from Anthony's Icon Library, WWW Images: http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/images/Images.html , December,  1998.