If you have electronic mail facilities, you will probably, like many of us, be suffering from the receipt of large and increasing quantities of “junk” e-mail. 

A recent editorial article in a respected UK computer magazine pleaded with Microsoft to do more to resolve this issue which is now seriously affecting those who have an MSN Hotmail e-mail account. 

Fortunately most sensible businesses will most likely not be using the free Hotmail web-mail service.  However, as it is free, and being web-based is easily accessible from anywhere in the world - Internet cafes or Internet access points in hotels and airports (Singapore in particular has extensive points for connecting travellers’ laptops to the Internet, often using wireless or “Bluetooth” connection facilities).

The problem with Hotmail is its success - it is free, and therefore has literally millions of e-mail accounts.  Unfortunately, what is not immediately apparent is that when signing up for a Hotmail account, your personal profile has an option that is checked by default – “Share my e-mail address”.  This gives Microsoft permission to circulate your e-mail address to all and sundry!  If you do have a Hotmail account and have not yet unchecked this option, then it is probably too late – your e-mail address is already in circulation!

You can use the junk mail filter facility within Hotmail to automatically siphon off mail from addresses that you specify.  Unfortunately, senders of such mail are very good at using e-mail aliases that change constantly, so keeping up with them is nearly impossible.  The only sure way is to set the filter at the highest level, which allows though only mail from addresses specified in your contacts list.  This is fine, except that you may receive mail from a long-lost relative or contact that is not in your contact list!

Our advice is that if you must use a free web mail service, then there are hundreds of others to choose from that may not suffer from the same extensive junk mail problem.  Visit http://www.emailaddresses.com where you can access a listing and short review of over 100 free web-based e-mail services.

Finally, if you are using a conventional POP3 mail service, then you are not likely to suffer from junk mail to the same extent.  However, some further words of advice:

·         Be very selective when registering your information on web sites.  Read their privacy statements and look for statements that indicate they may share your personal information with others.  Make sure these options are unchecked.

·         If you do receive un-solicited mail, then do NOT “unsubscribe” or respond in any way – this only serves to confirm that your e-mail address is valid.

·         Use any junk mail filtering facility that your e-mail client software (like Outlook) does provide.  It will not be foolproof, but it will help to save wading through long lists of junk mail.

·         Determine the e-mail address at your Internet Service Provider to which you should address complaints of abuse by junk mail originators.  Some ISPs do have sophisticated methods of tracking down persistent offenders and banning them.