From the estimable Less Antman: ‘Having to be available to clients and students has forced me to adopt a high profile with my e-mail address and subjected me to 300 spam messages per day. I couldn’t risk using a traditional spam program, which often throws away legitimate messages. But I no longer get any spam messages.
‘I use a program called ChoiceMail that intercepts my mail, checks it against an approved sender list, and asks others to fill out a simple registration form listing their name and reason for e-mailing me (which I then approve 99% of the time). Spammers, of course, never fill it out, so I never receive their messages, but unlike other spam programs, it doesn’t discard messages that might be legitimate. You can preview the messages in ChoiceMail that have been stopped and approve them yourself without waiting for the person to fill out the registration . . . or simply assume that anyone who had a legitimate purpose for contacting you wouldn’t have a problem filling in the simple form one time. You can also have the program scan your address book and develop a good guy list to begin, or add other senders automatically. One option adds to your good guy list anyone that you e-mail.
‘I went from 300 spams per day to none, and haven’t had any problems with legitimate correspondence. The program is cheap ($40) and, like all e-mail programs of quality, doesn’t work with AOL’s proprietary e-mail program (sorry, Andy). But I know AOL users who use it successfully, because they use Outlook Express to read their mail instead of AOL’s reader.’
YOU’VE BEEN TO PARIS – BUT PARIS, MAINE?
These are real places:
1) Toad Suck, AR
2) Hot Coffee, MS 39428
3) Spread Eagle, WI
4) Frankenstein, MO 65016
5) Chicken, AK 99732
6) Fifty-Six, AZ
7) Knockemstiff, OH
8) Rabbit Hash, KY 41005
9) Happy Jack, AZ 86024
10) Truth or Consequences, NM 87901
You may have seen this list going round the Internet. But only here will you find the zip codes. (Well, for those that have zip codes.) Ours is not only a family web site, it is a value-added web site.
