Howdy,

1) Use Thunderbird (free) http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

This will help protect you against virii and has a decent junk detector.

2) Don't put your e-mail address on boards such as this. Bots or Spiders search internet websites looking just for e-mail addresses. There are codes that can be placed on the website to keep bots/spiders from looking deeper than the home page, but most people don't bother coding those in. Greg could tell you if he did. I'm too lazy to look, atm.

3) Ask your firends to NOT put your e-mail address into webpages that for example...send you a greeting card via e-mail or when they take a survey and are requested to send this fun survey to a friend.

4) Get another e-mail box and use this one for public stuff. Use the new one for friends and family that you know won't abuse it (see #3 above). If you get Thunderbird and use your comcast e-mail address it wont stop the spam, but it will detect most if it for you and make it very easy to avoid. I've had one spam slip through.

5) Pop Ups. Hate'em? Get Firefox (free) http://www.mozilla.org/ same people that put out Thunderbird. You will never see another pop up...ever, that you don't ask to see.

Both of these programs are free and are supported by people that do it for free, because they love to code and basically put out a solid product. If you know what Linux/Unix is...this is the same concept.