Knowing spam update 2
Just a thought from 8 July 2003 about .

So ten days ago I signed up with KnowSpam. In that time, it's snared 12,334 spam messages for me. That adds up to roughly 36,000 spam emails I'd get in a month - far more than I expected.

For those of you who still don't think that spam is a big deal and people can just delete it if they don't like it, think about it this way: I just saved myself from hitting the delete key 36,000 times a month. Not bad, as time savings goes.

But the real joy is that I can now access my email on my Danger Hiptop. I've had the device for months, and it's had email functionality that whole time. But the email interface shows only 11 lines at a time, and only 18 characters of the subject line. When 95% of your email is spam, it's like finding a needle in a haystack. Literally.

So I never used the email functionality. Basically, because of spam, I couldn't use one of the key features of a device I'd bought for that purpose, and pay a monthly fee to use. And they say spam has no financial impact.

Now, thanks to KnowSpam, I only get good mail. So I've turned on the email checker on the Hiptop and get to see the good messages as they trickle in. In fact, I get so little mail, this weekend I sent a message to myself just to make sure it was still working.

It was.

More spam coverage: BusinessWeek Online: The Only Way to Can the Spam.