Spam: How some people cope

Some have given up on filters because, with them, they lose important messages. Others have just about given up on email altogether. But some depend on it too much and simply can't do without the technology, spam or no, the New York Times reports. My friend Jean, who's quoted in the piece, is in that last group, because - as Net-mom - she answers a lot of people's questions about the Net. And Jean's quite happy with the new Bayesian filtering used by the latest versions of Eudora email software. Good filtering just takes a bit of work. Jean gets about 900 junk emails/spams a day, and she's grateful Eudora filters the bulk of it out, but she still has to go through the junk folder every few days to make sure she doesn't trash anything important. A key point is that she's in control - she sets the level of restrictiveness and can check Eudora's work. Some ISPs do the filtering for you without showing what's been blocked, so you can miss legitimate mail without ever knowing it. I can't really imagine life without email - as the Times puts it, spam is the bathwater; email's the baby. It really helps to hear how people are dealing with the bathwater.

Incidentally, here's a step in the right direction: The giant pharmaceutical Pfizer is taking action against publishers of spam about Viagra, the BBC reports.