Yes, AOL is *very* good at blocking spam. (Unfortunately, they are also good at selling their subscriber list to spammers they approve of, which is another topic). So is Hotmail. Both are such huge targets, however, that users are almost inevitably deluged anyway.

Recently, MSN and AOL agreed to team up on their anti-spam software development. That IS good news.

I never get any spam to either of my personal addresses (see security measures above), but I manage a couple of mailing lists. Anything being posted that isn't from a subscriber gets bounced to me for review. Egad, it's a lot of spam, even though we have filters in place. Recently, ZERO spam has been getting through. Unfortunately, the company that ultimately owns and runs the mailing lists won't tell me what they did!

Work is another story -- I can't change my address there and it's published as a customer contact. Not much to do but grit my teeth and hope the anti-spam efforts in progress will help.

I know of no way to get your account off spammer lists, and once it's on one your address will be resold forever. Numerous utilities exist to preview you mail and dump the spam first; none of them have ever appealed to me.

NEVER click the unsubscribe link or reply to spam, unless it's a legitimate company you've heard of. Reply or unsubscribe links are usually just harvester programs that then tag your address as being a good one, making it a more valuable commodity to resell.