Some people differentiate between the two main types of uninvited emails - UCE and SPAM. Others include UCE under the heading of SPAM.

• UCE is Unsolicited Commercial Email from genuine businesses, and is usually responsibly targetted at sales prospects (according to the UCE originator).

• SPAM is bogus offers and is usually un-targetted - it is just sent to a random, or even randomly-generated, email addresses.

Whether UCE or SPAM, despite being easier to dispose of, it seems to cause more anger than the paper version. Not least because cumulatively it wastes so much time for the recipient and clogs the Internet.

Much of the spam I receive is advertising 'get rich quick' programs, health solutions, 'adult' products or services, bank scams, bogus stocks and share advice.

The simple, low blood pressure way to deal with it is to just ignore it, and delete it.  But you might want to do more in the "war against spam."

One way to relieve the irritation is to stop the spam (and virus-laden emails) at the border of your domain. If you could do that, you wouldn't even have to sort through and decide what is junk and what is good email.
Linn Barringer Limited offers just such a facility with Dr.Web and Spam Assassin services pre-configured on your domain hosted. More...

See these anti-spam Links:
www.euro.cauce.org/en/ - www.euroispa.org - www.dma.org.uk 

This link to a study of how spam is generated and how to avoid it: www.cdt.org/
Select 'Spam' then under the CDT Commentary heading, select
CDT Report on Origins of Spam - "Why Am I Getting All This Spam?"

Alternatively, go straight to the CDT article:
www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

If you want to fight spam and stop the perpetrator, it is not a good idea to reply (see 'do not reply') asking them to stop. Most ISPs condemn spam and do not tolerate their systems being used for spam.  Therefore, if you want to stop the spammer, report him to his ISP.  Most ISPs have an email address like "abuse@spammers-isp.com" to which you can report spammers. Some have spam-specific email reporting procedures.  Usually, you will be advised by automatic email if this the case.

Another way to reduce spam is to stop your email address being 'harvested' in the first place. First, NEVER send on chain letters, or even normal emails, with all the preceding addresses open for all to see. (see). Secondly, if you have or maintain a websites, try this excellent, free, Email Obfuscation service.

Unfortunately, however, not all spam comes from where it seems to, because spammers are often also forgers. They forge or fake (also known as 'spoof') the From: field in the email. So you need to analyse the email Headers.

They seem like gobbledygook at first but you will soon find your way around the important bits to help  you decide where to send your query. I say "query" because you don't want to accuse an ISP of allowing spam when it may not originate in their domain.

Sometimes it can be helpful when analysing the header to guess the originating ISP's URL and take a look at their website. e.g. something from dilly1.pobox.com - try www.pobox.com. Read what their policy is on spam, and their terms & conditions.

Wait a minute, you say, how do I find the headers? In Microsoft Outlook, double-click on the mail item to open it. From the menu, select View, then Options. The window that pops up has several fields, the last of which contains the message header, usually with a scroll-bar to the right.  If you need to send a query to an ISP, you will need to forward the offending message, and Copy/Paste this header information into the forwarded email. Be polite and suggest that the spam MIGHT have come from one of their customers.

Below is a typical spam message header. I reported this one to pobox.com but I'm not 100% sure it came from them!  I have changed important details in the header below for security but the layout is "as received."  This is just a starter for your email header analysis lesson! For the real thing, go to pobox or Free sites.