How can you avoid it? I have had very good luck using Yahoo Mail, and I have had poor luck on Hotmail. Other people seem to report the same thing, so that maybe a large part of the answer.

I had a Hotmail account that got so much spam that I started using a Yahoo instead. Recently some of my Yahoo accounts have been getting a little spam. I think all of it has been the African scams where they say they have to get money out of an African country and need your help. Still this involves only a handful of e-mails.

Recently I set up a new Hotmail account because I needed an e-mail address that would be put on the net if a newspaper published an article I submitted to them. They did not publish the article. Therefore my new Hotmail address was not put on the net. So there is no way for the people who send spam to know about it. Nevertheless, I am getting loads of spam. So the problem does seem to be Hotmail.

I had thought that the problem might be that Hotmail was my first account and I made some mistakes with it. I put my address on the net for a while and then took it off. Other people put my address on the net and those were never removed. But that is not the case with the new account and the new account has the same problems so it seems that Hotmail is the problem.

Nevertheless you would be well advised not put your address on the net and discourage other people from doing so.

Also as a spiritual act of mercy and out of ordinary kindness do not put other people's address on the Internet. Note that I do not make my guest book open to the public. This allows people to give me their e-mail address without giving it to the world.

You can use Google to see if anyone has posted your e-mail account.

I still have my Hotmail account but I have eliminated the spam by putting the spam guard up to the highest levels. Only people and companies on my address list can get through. Furthermore I have set my account to immediately dump the spam. To keep the account active I must check it at least once a month, I have not found that difficult. This is an effective way to exit Hotmail. Encouraging people to avoid Hotmail maybe a spiritual act of mercy.

I am curious about how Yahoo succeeds in screening out spam. If you know perhaps you could leave a note in my mail box.

On the related, if much less important, topic of avoiding improper Internet comics. I have a web page on another site that gives links to a number of web sites with popular newspaper comics. These sites have hundreds of comics updated daily, current hits like Dilbert, classics like Peanuts, and new artists who maybe the hits of the future. You can use this site to search for these free Internet comics without accidentally stumbling on a site with pictures your clergyman would not approve of.