Many of you were very concerned at the enormous increase in junk email, estimated to have grown about 42% during 2001, and the seemingly non-stop invasion of X-rated email.

Analysts predict that the volume of email on the Internet, most of it junk, will grow another 50 percent in 2002.

That is a lot of email!

With estimates that the number of Internet users is nearing the 1 billion mark, the amount of email floating around the Internet is only going to get worse.

Many of you have asked if there is any sure-fire cure for all this junk email that we receive right now and any more that may appear this year.

The short answer - Yes.

Make good use of your delete button! :-)

The long answer is - No.

No, there is no 100 percent cure for the spam that plagues us all, X-rated or not. But there are several ways to try and alleviate this problem.

Most email programs, including Microsoft's Outlook Express, have custom filtering features that are built into the program but which are, more often than not, very much unused.

The big problem in using ANY email filter system is that they may cause blocking of legitimate email.

Basically, you can set up filters to remove email that comes from a specific email address or set it up to block email which contains certain key words in either the Subject section or in the Body of the message.

Netscape Communicator 4.0 or later also have filtering ability but Netscape Navigator does not have filtering ability. And Eudora 3.0 and above can also filter your email.

Filtering will not eliminate all spam email but it can make your life on the Internet just a bit easier.

Just keep in mind that filters are a constant, ongoing process. Spammers are always changing strategy to keep ahead of the Filters or other Spam Blocking software.

Here are a few of the most popular email management tools:

SpamKiller by Novasoft
http://www.spamkiller.com/ Free 30 day trial. $29.95 w/free upgrades.

Spam Buster by Contact Plus Corporation
http://www.contactplus.com/products/spam/spam.htm
Free download for evaluation. $19.95 for registered version.

Brightmail
http://www.brightmail.com/
Considered one of the best, if not the top filtering program.

Elron Software
http://www.elronsw.com/
Internet filtering software. Free trial downloads.

Mailshell
http://www.mailshell.com/
Free 30-day trial. $29.95 per year. Use unlimited email addresses.

Once you decide how you want to approach this problem, then it is just a matter of keeping tabs on your email and making adjustments to block future changes that spammers might make.

Keeping on top of this will allow you to can the majority of the SPAM that is now finding it's way into your in-box.