How much time do you spend deleting, filtering, and otherwise handling spam? I get over 1,000 e-mails a day, and about 970 of them are spam. As you can imagine, I really hate this. I don't know how much spam you get, but I don't imagine you appreciate getting it either.

Many people are proposing legislative and technological ways of dealing with spam. These approaches won't work, for reasons you can ascertain if you apply the lessons history provides us.

What will work?

Think about why people spam you. They have an economic incentive. Take that away, and what happens? They stop spamming.

How do you take that incentive away? Don't spend money on any offer, no matter how attractive it appears, if someone spams you. Talk to others you know, and let them know about this one sure method to stop spam. You may think an individual won't make any difference. But, many spammers may already be close to pulling the plug because of low responses and one less paying customer may be all it takes.

Don't reply to spam, and don't unsub from it. Report it to your ISP, and they may help blacklist the spammer--thereby increasing the costs of the spam.

If we can eliminate spam, we will all save a great deal of time. The only feasible way of eliminating it is to deny the spammers what they are seeking to get from spamming you.