Handling spam mail [Was: Does the Privacy Act Cover The Internet, and spam mail?]

Doesn't your ISP offer a web interface option? Bigpond does, though I
haven't really used it. Hotmail and Yahoo do too. You simply select
the spam messages and delete them. No downloading needed, except for
the headers. Very useful for outbreaks of crap like the current.

Furthermore, both Hotmail and Yahoo shunt spam automagically into
"junk mail" folders which you can simply empty with one "click".
(Mind you, they still let a minor amount of stuff through to the real
Inbox too. But you can select all that with a click too, then another
"click" and it's gone.) I suspect you can do something similar with
the Bigpond web Inbox, but they don't seem to have a"junk mail" folder
as such.

Incidentally, Yahoo has an interesting ploy dependent on this junk.
In the past few days the junk has exceeded the allowable 4 MB of space
and a notice comes up suggesting you *pay* for an increased
allowance. This notice obscures the mail list for the Inbox, and it
doesn't seem possible to clear it directly (though I haven't really
tried that hard . However, it is overwritten by the list for the
junk mail folder when you open that, and stays cleared when you then
go back to the Inbox after deleting the junk.


Cheers, Phred.