It appears people are giving credit that may be somewhat misplaced. It makes little difference what browser or email program you use (there is a difference between the two). The spam filters are a separate item, and can be used with either.

Quite a few of the email services have significantly improved their spam filtering, at the servers, in recent months; although it's soemwhat variable. We have never received significant spam on our MSN addy, over a period of more than 10 years; but MSN has been moving their service to http servers shared with Hotmail, and the spam has increased a somewhat since they slammed us to a new server.

My "junk" Hotmail account received massive(?) amounts of junk, up to about 400 per week and sometimes double that, until Bill Gates got some spam at his home a few months ago, and it suddenly stopped. (He held a press conference to tell everyone he was pissed.) Unfortunately, the same server consolidation, and push for everyone to use webmail and browser viewing in place of POP3 and email programs has been accompanied by some creep back up in the amount of spam - on both accounts.

Nearly every email service makes constant changes (sometimes euphemistically called improvements) in their spam control. There are a number of new spam filters available and sometimes incorporated into browsers, email programs, and even operating systems as "incremental patches" that you may not realize are being added. Of course, its all "just to help you out."

There have also been a number of convictions of spammers recently. In one case a month or so ago AOL was awarded damages in the amount of $1,000,000,000 (US) [I counted the zeros twice] against a single "spammer." (They'll take ten cents on the dollar if they can find him.) Another was sentenced a couple of months ago to 9 years in prison. Maybe the message is getting through.

Most reputable email services will now block you from sending email if they determine that you're sending spam. Unfortunately, they don't always tell you they've done it, or why; but Hotmail - as an example - will generally terminate your "sendability" immediately if they find you sending any message with more than 50 addresses on it. They may also do the same if they find you sending the same message 50 times in succession to individual addresses. That can be a real problem if you have to send a newsletter. An additional complication, if they block you so that you can't send an email, is that the ONLY WAY you can contact Hotmail about your account is by email. (Brilliant people that they are.)

Any browser, and any email program, can be equipped to filter incoming spam. Any service can filter at the server, and many do; although the performance is "variable." With most services, you can change settings to tell them what amount of filtering you want them to do, and of course you can change settings on any filter you have on your own machine. No filter is perfect; but they have improved a lot in the last few months; and they are being used much more often.

John