Spam Mail:  Ah... Spam, we all know it and we all hate it! but where does it come from and why do we get it? Well Spam is the result a a very small minority of people being total jerks and disregarding the rules of common decency. There may be no greater reason to keep capitol punishment in place, than Spam mailers.  Who's fault is Spam!?: Well first off, and I say this in great seriousness DESPITE WHAT YOU THINK ITS NOT YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER'S FAULT. Your ISP hates Spam mail as much as you do. I mean think about it, your Spam and the Spam of every other email user on the same service all gets crunched through your ISP's machines, their system has to process all of your crap, and we frankly don't like that, but there is nothing we can do about it. One of the worst parts of Spam is there is no way to tell Spam from legitimate mail. If your mail provider starts filtering it for say key words, then the next thing you know you stop getting things you wanted.  Why am I getting Spam?!: Spam is bulk unwanted email that floods into you mailbox for reasons unknown. Most of it has to do with sex or enlarging this or that. but why are you getting it?  You are getting Spam for one of two reasons, either you have given your email away to a web site carelessly and it has been sold to a bulk mailing company (once this happens you will never see the end of it) or a bulk mailing company has started sending mail to, literally, random names and one of them happened to be you. Once one of the random named emails is delivered, they tag you and know that you exist and keep sending it.  How can I stop it?: You don't want to hear this, but you can't stop Spam. All you can do is try and filter it out of your sight or impede its progress. Many people try to get special software for this, things like mail washer that plug in to Outlook express, but what most people don't know is that Outlook Express already does those things, once again coming back to the conclusion that no one pays any attention to the tools they use... So if you want to block a certain person (I use the term liberally because its really a fictional address from an automated system) all you do is highlight the email and go to the "Message" menu in Outlook Express 6 and click "Block Sender". In addition to that you will notice another selection on that menu called "Create Rule from Message" This tool will allow you to set up custom filters so that Outlook Express can automatically perform actions on messages based on your specifications, in other word you can set it to do something like delete all messages that contain the word "enlarge". Spam, Legal?: Spam is in fact a legal institution, but there are some requirements from the US government to make it so. The most important of these requirements is that any and every legal piece of Spam mail has to have way to take your address off of the list, usually a link or button at the bottom. Well that's great! a way to get yourself off the mailing list... or is it... Frankly, illegitimate Spamers, those are the non-reputable businesses sending you mail probably don't have a button (thusly illegal) or if they do, I wouldn't trust it. The theory goes that these jerks Spamming you really confirm that your email address exists when you try to take yourself off the list and then mail you more. So, I wouldn't try un-subscribing from those unsavory emails.