posted 03-06- 02:50 PM               

For the last six months or so I've been using SpamCop. Basically, the way it works is through a voting scheme. If you get an email that you think is spam, SpamCop gives you a two-click method to report it as spam. After that, anything from that site is treated as spam and held for everyone else. The more people reporting spam the longer a site is treated as a spam source.

SpamCop is incredibly good at parsing emails and finding the true source of a spam. That helps in keeping their database current. It also makes it easier to report spam. When you report spam to SpamCop you have the option to report the spam to the source' ISP, too. Most spammers get shut down in a day or two. And just as nice, the report comes from SpamCop, not from your real email address.

You can create your own white list and black list. It's easy to import your address book. Also, anything that SpamCop reports as spam that you manually decide to send on automagically gets added to your white list. So after the first week or two email from your friends is sent on without delay.

You can check for spam as often or rarely as you like. I check a couple of times a day in case something got held that I want to know about.

I've been very happy with the service so far. It's not free, but it's not very expensive, either. I get a moderate amount of mail and I think it's going to cost me about $25/year.

Privacy nuts and those with severe security requirements might be put off because all email goes through SpamCop's system. But all email goes through several systems to get to you, anyway, so I don't think this is any worse.

Go take a look and decide for yourself. I'm not in any way affiliated with this guy. I just think it's a robust-looking system to combat spam. And it doesn't involve the government.