My email inbox is typ­i­cally con­sumed by the lat­est and great­est “INVENTION!” and the extra-annoying “LOSE WEIGHT in 32 DAYS with­out EATING”.

The ratio of spam ver­sus “real” emails amounts to the following:

6 “real emails” : 150 spam emails

I fig­ured that I would either remove myself from this planet and find one with­out forced adver­tis­ing meth­ods or face the real­ity that this is how the Inter­net works, includ­ing emailing.

To solve this prob­lem I recently down­loaded Mail­washer, a nifty lit­tle pro­gram that rests in the taskbar and checks the email on your server (before it’s been down­loaded to your computer).

At this point using hueris­tic meth­ods, Mail­washer checks the incom­ing mes­sages and marks them ‘Pos­si­ble Spam’, ‘Spam’, or ‘Virus’. You then have the option of delet­ing the email, bounc­ing the email to the orig­i­nal sender or black­list­ing the sender.

After play­ing with the pro­gram for a bit I’ve cut down on the amounts of spam that I would get on a daily basis — tremen­dously. It’s like com­ing out from under the deep end and breath­ing a breath of fresh air.

Well, minus the moody swim teacher and the plas­tic col­ored rings.