For various reasons, including the fact that so much spam comes from overseas, legislative and technical attempts to deal with the problem will probably take time, which in the short term leaves it to users and ISPs to come up with solutions.

What is the solution? In fact, there is no one solution that works equally well for all users, because different users have different needs. For example, a user who sends email only to immediate friends and family has a different (and much easier) problem than a user who runs a business and must accept email from anyone on the Internet. For this reason, Open Door is providing a number of solutions for you to choose from.

What you can do

All users, from beginners to advanced, can use the following items to significantly reduce the amount of spam they receive.

• If you're getting lots of spam, make a one-time change of email address.
• Choose and use your email address(es) wisely.
• Use a mail program with good spam filtering.
• Support federal and state legislation.
• See our tips on dealing with spam effectively.

No censorship

Most of the solutions provided by Open Door Networks will be implemented, if desired, by you, the end user. Open Door does not offer a site-wide anti-spam solution because this in general involves censorship on our part. There are a number of services and products available which either use blacklists, or filter the content of messages, and reject messages that fail the test. For example, blacklists of Internet addresses known to be associated with the sending of spam sound like a great idea, but the lists are not always accurate or up to date, which sometimes results in valid email being bounced. Likewise with content filtering. You may legitimately use the word "viagra" in a message, but a content filter has no way of knowing whether your usage is legitimate or not. Rejection of potentially valid email amounts to censorship, and Open Door will usually recommend against any product or service that does so. This raises an important general point:

No automated spam filtering technology is perfect. Even the best will allow some spam to get through, and/or misidentify valid email as spam. This includes ISP-wide filtering, third-party filtering services, and filtering software on individual users' machines.

Advanced solutions

If you're an advanced user, or have special needs because you run a business or travel a lot, you may want to consider these options:

• Create your own filtering rules for your mail program.
• Add a Bayesian filter to your mail program with a product like SpamSieve.
• Use a third-party challenge-response system.
• If you really want to block email, despite the problems that go along with doing so, use a spam-filtering service or consider...

Open Door's new, experimental spam-blocking service

Open Door has been working with new Google anti-spam technology to provide a filtering anti-spam solution. We believe Google (as part of its popular GMail service) has developed efficient, reliable, well-supported technologies that we can incorporate into our email system. Our new system is still under "beta test," but, if you'd like to try it, check here. Please do pay careful attention to the warnings.