"Naturally, none of them have an "opt out" link."

It sounds like perhaps you have been using opt out links, in cases where there is one?  That might be why you get so much spam.  Following opt-out links helps spammers track which addresses actually get to a human being.

What did you think: that you were really opting out?  Spammers have no honor.

are mail filtering rules available in MS Outlook and Outlook Express.  You can set them to filter out junk mails based on sender's email addresses or key words in the subject line.

Good luck.

Oh, have some fun with the jerks!  When I received mine, I played along for several days, asking him for more information, pretended I didn't understand his instructions, got him to send me a copy of the "letter" I was supposed to take to the bank.  Finally, the person sending the emails just quit.  I also called the police in our area that deal with Internet crime; they said they were not interested in pursuing it.

'how do i block spam' yields two promising links. The first would be more applicable for your ISP. It is a site that maintains a dynamic list of known/verified spam sources. Your ISP basically checks all mail coming in through its mail server against the list and blocks any matches. You, as a subscriber, never need know it's running. The site is www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso

The second site might be useful if you use MS Lookout, er, um, I mean Outlook, or Outlook Express. It is a website that has a downloadable spam filter that plugs in to Outlook. When email comes in to your email client (Outlook) it is tested against a known list. Any matches are moved to a spam folder. If you get spam that the filter doesn't recognize then you press a button. Not only is that message moved to the spam folder, but the parent website's database is instantly updated and everyone else who uses the filter gets updated when they next check their email. The website is: www.spamfighter.com

I haven't used the second, and don't know if my ISP uses the first. However, I very, very rarely get any spam, so my ISP must use something. You may wish to contact yours and see if there's anything they can do.

Similar to TER's search mechanism, different Internet searches (Google or otherwise) will probably yield a plethora of results. You might also wish to check sites like CNet or ZDNet and see what they rate as a good solution.

at the moment i am using a free email box from yahoo and spam hardly EVER gets through. i'm thinking about paying for their deluxe service, prices seem pretty reasonable for that as well.

msn is going after the spammers, and it shows in my personal email box with them.  Setup the filters to take spam to a "junk" box, and 90% of the garbage will go there.  

About 1% of your junk box will be useful email.  Glance through the box, mark these as "safe" and they won't go to the junk box again.  

I suppose it's a lot like taking out roaches.  You never kill them all, but you can take out a big percentage.

I use SpamSubtract software.  It lets you decide what goes in your inbox.  The junk goes into SpamSubtract where you can preview it or just delete it before it ever gets into your PC.  It works for me.

Sometimes spy ware will continue to send emails based on files loaded on your machine.  Run the Search and Destroy and it might limit the junk mail you get.

http://www.cloudmark.com

Product name is Spamnet.