Right now, there is nothing you can do to stop getting junk e-mail, or even to stop the people who send it. Junk e-mail and "spam" is completely legal, no matter how annoying and costly it is. But there's a possibility we can stop that.

I read that a few years ago, a couple companies started sending out junk faxes to random fax numbers. These were unsolicited advertising faxes sent to random businesses and individuals who were unfortunate enough to have had their fax numbers collected by the junk faxing companies. Junk faxing was made illegal after enough people made a snit about it because it was costing large amounts of money in the form of tied-up fax time and wasted fax machine ink and paper (which can be quite costly). This seems to be the exact same problem that junk e-mail has, although to a lesser degree (instead of costing you 10-50 cents per junk fax, it may cost you 1 cent for a junk e-mail). So, we just need to make a big enough snit about the junk e-mail that we get, and make it to the right people, and maybe we can stop the majority of junk e-mail once and for all.

What can I do?

• Contact your congressperson and let them know what a problem junk e-mail is. It may seem like a petty thing to be contacting your congressperson about, but I have heard of at least one proposed bill to regulate/stop junk e-mail already (I'll try and find out more information), so somebody's doing it, and somebody else is listening. Your congressperson is really the only "higher authority" that you can contact about the problem of junk e-mail. They're not directly involved in sending it, but they're the only ones who can make a law to stop it.

• Learn more about junk e-mail. There are many good sites on the Web dealing with the problems of junk e-mail and spam. I have provided some that I like on the links page, but there are probably others. The more educated you are, the better you can understand the problem and make a rational decision. You may end up completely disagreeing with my statements here, but at least you made the decision yourself, instead of just listening to me ramble on and blindly agreeing with me.

• Sign an Internet petition against junk e-mail. I'm sure there are some out there - if I find any I'll list them on the links page.

These are suggestions for the next higher level of "fighting back" - trying to stop the junk e-mail at its source. If you have other suggestions for stopping junk e-mail, let me know and I'll add them to the list.