Getting rid of SPAM

These Internet ads are maddening! I get hundreds of e-mails each day, and many of them infect my mailbox with the most lurid assortment of bizarre, outrageous and trashy come-ons.

TV commercials used to be bad enough. Mostly because of the ads and lousy programming, I don't watch television any more. Life is just too short to devote my time to watching a disposable-douche commercial. You know what I mean?

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But now that I've turned off the boob-tube, along comes the boob-box. SPAM, it seems, is Madison Avenue's gift to the Internet. Every day, for example – without fail – I get dozens of offers to increase the length of my sex organ. I guess I'm supposed to be grateful so many people care about the size of my private parts, but, honestly, this has never been a problem for either me or my wife.

One of the more outlandish of these offers promises to add several entire inches to my anatomy. The wonders of modern technology! Since I am not in need of their assistance, I usually just trash the e-mail. But one day I got to thinking that since these ads were so pervasive, surely some poor soul must actually want their services. So, out of curiosity, I forwarded one of these ads to a colleague at WorldNetDaily, suggesting it might be of use to him.

Knowing he probably gets just as many of these ads as I do, I suggested he could combine my ads with his ads and, instead of adding on several inches, actually acquire several feet. He didn't think this would work very well, so I just went back to deleting the ads.

Some other ubiquitous advertisements include offers to improve the reception of my cell phone. Too bad I don't have one. Others promise to make me filthy rich. Of course, you have to wonder why they need me to follow their program if they really know the secrets they promise to reveal and are already fabulously wealthy themselves.

Then there are the pleas for help from various people in Africa – and more recently, Iraq – from complete strangers who claim to want my assistance in moving tens of millions of their dollars over to America. Federal law enforcement refers to this as the "Nigerian fraud" problem. As a reward for helping these strangers, they promise large sums of money in return and often invoke God's name to impress their targeted rubes with their sincerity. Those gullible individuals who have been sucked in by these Third World shysters have lost lots of money and, in some cases, been physically attacked as a reward for their foolishness and greed.

But, by far, the worst of the ads which daily assault my e-mail box are the pornography ads. Each day, they get more brazen, vile and disgusting. Despite using e-mail filters which automatically dispose of this toxic trash, the sleaze promoters change the subject lines and e-mail addresses frequently as a way around such filters.

So, what's the answer? The truth is, there is no effective cure-all yet available. Filters do help a little bit. All good e-mail programs have them. And keeping your preview window small is a good way to limit how much you see of a porn ad before you click your delete button. Also, parents can help keep their children from getting into trouble by keeping the family computer in a public place – preferably a high-traffic area like the living room or family room.

I used to go to Internic or Network Solutions to learn who these spammers were, and then complain to their listed Internet service provider, but there are now so many of them, I just don't have the time to do this any longer. If you do have the time, the ISP will often remove the offender since they hate SPAM too.

What I do know is I don't want the government to "solve" this problem. Besides their usual ineffective, inefficient and incompetent approach to problem solving, the last thing America needs is federal control of the Internet – that only creates another problem: I don't want Uncle Sam deciding what is acceptable for me to read or view.

Eventually, these companies will dry up and blow away when America decides male sex organs are, finally, long enough, and stops patronizing the businesses which run these ads.