If you're like most professionals, unwanted junk-e-mail solicitations are becoming a serious obstacle to your productivity.

Weeding through endless sales pitches is not only time consuming, but also creates the potential for missing legitimate correspondence in the process.

While I've investigated, tested and reviewed countless tools that can help slow the flow, each has included compromises, some quite serious.

Among the most common limitations:

1. Most anti-Spam solutions require that you to install software on each machine that you wish to protect. This creates an endless cycle of downloading, installing, upgrading and maintaining that is multiplied by the number of computers you use.

2. The majority of systems are limited by either the e-mail clients that they support (Only Outlook and Outlook Express, for instance) or by the type of e-mail account they can protect, often excluding AOL, among others.

3. Too many of these options inconvenience legitimate senders by forcing them to verify that they are legitimate customers clients and prospects before delivering their e-mails. This is usually accomplished by sending a "challenge response" email to the original sender, which is not only an unwanted inconvenience, but can also add hours, or even days, to the delivery of the original message.

4. Nearly all of the junk-e-mail filters I've researched simply "bounce" too many legitimate e-mails, often at rates as high as 2 percent to 5 percent - and that's with some of the better solutions.

Clearly, while dealing with Spam is a real-world business issue, many potential solutions create even bigger problems than what they are trying to solve.

The good news is that for the last several months I have been protecting my various accounts (from both junk-email and viruses, too) with the services of OnlyMyEmail and can happily report near perfect results.

Not only does this service work with just about any e-mail software that you might own but it also functions with almost all service providers, including AOL. As far as I'm concerned, the best part of the bargain is that this system runs on the Internet 24 hours a day, freeing me from installing, configuring and maintaining software on my computers.

Even while that sounds beneficial on the surface, in real world usage, it's even better. The result of this approach is that I never have to worry about which computer contains what configuration, and can even check my e-mail from computers other than my own, all while receiving the same protection from Spam, as well as common e-mail viruses.

However, no convenience is worth the potential loss of legitimate e-mails that might cost a valuable business relationship. It's in this regard that OnlyMyEmail has truly delivered. With over 13,048 junk emails removed from my various addresses, I've yet to find a single instance of having a legitimate message removed.

Of course, this level of efficiency required some involvement on my part. For instance, I did add the sending email addresses for several online newsletters that I wish to receive to OnlyMyEmail's "Always Allow" list. While this might not have been necessary, some mass-mailed newsletters have the potential to appear as Spam to such services, so I took this extra step just to be sure.

Additionally, the system requires that you configure your e-mail software to check for new messages no more frequently than every 10 minutes.

Regardless, these are small compromises to make, compared to the benefit of truly eliminating junk-e-mail and without interfering with legitimate correspondence.

While the service does take 10 to 15 minutes to fully configure, it's truly a "set it and forget about it" proposition. Other than occasionally revisiting the site just to double check that no legitimate e-mail has been removed from my accounts, I simply continue to use the same email software that I always have, almost forgetting about the OnlyMyEmail service altogether.

While I still receive some unwanted e-mails, they have been reduced by well over 90 percent, and combined with the peace of mind that my legitimate e-mails are being delivered, that's good enough for me.

Published: August 6, 2003

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