choster - 2:54 am on Sep 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

If you're a techie who only uses Pine, and who only communicates with other Pine users and only receives text e-mails, blocking HTML mail may be a time saver. But I wouldn't block formatted mail any sooner than I'd block, say, non-U.S.-originating e-mail. Probably 99% of foreign mail I receive is spam, but every few days there's an old college buddy stationed in Europe or university researcher in Asia requesting information writing in.

Fighting spam take a multifaceted approach-- like fighting juvenile delinquency, terrorism, all the other troubles of the world. Source filtering and content filtering, server-side rejects from open relays and client-side plugins, possible legal challenges and so on have to be used in combination to control it.