In the publication's August 2003 edition the scientists at MIT try to explain what can be done about spam. They catalogue seven competing methods that are available right now - all of which are designed to identify and remove spam from your inbox and your life.

Here's a quick review:
· Signature Based Filtering - Anti-spam software that creates and monitors fake email accounts. Mail sent to the fake accounts must be spam.
· Collaborative Filtering - Users vote on which messages they think are spam.
· Gateway Filtering - A cooperative network intercepts spam before it reaches user accounts.
· Heuristic Filtering - Rules-based content filtering in which a filter scans email for junk mail tip-off terms (IE: Viagra).
· Bayesian Filtering - A probability-based system that learns the individual user's definition of spam, one email at a time.
· Circle of Trust Filtering - Only pre-authorized users can get their email through.
· Vaccinating Filtering - Hides users' email addresses from spammers.

While there are definite plusses and minuses to each system I have chosen the "collaborative" method. I use SpamNet, a product from a company called Cloudmark. Three-fourths of the email I get is spam, but SpamNet takes those 150-plus messages a day and kicks out all but about 15 spam messages for me. That's 15 plus the non-spam email that I'm always happy to see. Those 15 or so get through because no one has voted that they're spam yet, so I click on the "Block" button so other SpamNet users won't even have to see the email if it should be sent to them.

In a collaborative method of junk email removal all email marked as spam is shunted to a special spam folder. When a user has time he or she can glance through the file just to make sure that something they want isn't in there by mistake - that could happen with the collaborative method because some people sign up for newsletters and then mark them as spam. In reality, it doesn't happen often but if a user doesn't think something in their spam folder is spam they can "Unblock" it so they'll get it in the future.

The only catch is that, so far, SpamNet only works with Microsoft Outlook. An Outlook Express version is reportedly coming soon.

The service costs $3.99 per account per month, but I conservatively estimate that SpamNet saves me dozens of hours a month by freeing me from the time- consuming and onerous task of manually deleting offers from pornographers, herbal Viagra merchants, refinancing guru's and those pesky third-world dictators who need my help to slip get millions of dollars out of their war-torn country. It's the best $3.99 I've ever spent.

MIT Technology Review of Anti-Spam
Get Spamnet NOW!