I can state that, before we even started Pet of the Day, I have always received plenty of spam. All it takes is one company getting and releasing your email address, and it gets sold forever by bulk email companies - I often get offers to sell me "15 million sure-fire email addresses!" Why they think I'd want to annoy others like they annoy me is unfathomable!

We have never sold our users email addresses to anyone.

Users of "free" email programs, or big companies like AOL, are particularly susceptible. If you REALLY hate getting them, you'd have to change your email address and NEVER give it to anyone but friends, and never post it anywhere in a newsgroup or on a website. If you're on AOL, you can block all non-AOL mail, but then any message I sent you, for example, would also be blocked!

Spam is the thorn in the rosebush of the Internet. The quickest thing to do is "delete and move on," I've found. And we have "Internet via cable" which means that whenever my computer is on, I'm connected to the Internet. It has not increased the percentage of junk mail I get, I just get it faster than if I had a modem dial-up.

But hey, in my email, I get all the pet nominations - one pet picture makes up for 100 awful spams, and the percentage is way less than that!