LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) - There's nothing more exasperating than opening your e-mail to find all 20 new messages are unsolicited junk mail and not cheerful holiday greetings from family or friends.

Now is prime time for spammers to send out their pitches for holiday shopping, weight loss, personal credit restoration or pornographic material. Many use seasonal hooks such as "in time for New Year's" or "great gift idea" to attract consumers.

"For retailers and direct marketers, the holiday shopping season is the heaviest and most profitable time, and they tend to promote in proportion," said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp.

Spam volume is up an estimated 45 percent this year, and will rise another fourfold by 2004, according to research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. In three years, Jupiter predicts 206 billion spam messages will be sent out annually, up from 49.7 billion today.

There's no full-proof way to eliminate junk e-mail, but there are steps that fed-up email recipients can take to reduce the flow of unwanted marketing pitches. Among the most proactive are filtering services that block unwanted and unsolicited e-mail through a variety of methods.

Anti-spam

Most Internet Service Providers such as AOL have spam-blocking tools that serve as a first line of defense, but ammo from additional software can be a smart move, experts said.

Brightmail.com Chief Executive Gary Hermanson expects the number of spam attacks that his firm detects - each of which include multiple e-mail addresses - to hit 2 million for the month of December, up from 1.9 million in November and 1.7 million in October.

Spamcop.com, which counts AT&T Global among the top e-mail offenders, helps consumers fight back by reporting spam on its site for free. SpamCop will send an e-mail on a consumers' behalf to the appropriate network administrator such as Yahoo, who will likely terminate the spammer's membership, said founder Julian Haight.

Or users can sign up for a spamcop.net e-mail account with advanced management tools that allow users more control over what's filtered. The service now costs 50 cents per megabyte of e-mail, but will switch to a flat fee of $30 a year at the beginning of 2002, Haight said.

Spamcop's filter "lets you see what e-mails have been blocked to either report them or release them into your inbox," Haight said. "Basically they can white list or black list any domain or e-mail address."

Other services include Spamkiller.com, an e-mail account filter that users can sort according to sender's address, subject, message text or any message header. Priced at $29,95, it also offers country filters to catch spam routed from overseas addresses.

Creating an alias

Advanced filtering is especially handy during the holidays when many consumers may find themselves swamped by mass mailings from retailers they've shopped with in the past.

"As retailers become more and more concerned about whether they're going to make fourth-quarter numbers, they will make more solicitations," said Eytan Urbas, vice president of marketing at Mailshell.com, an anti-spam service.

Mailshell.com allows its customers to set up a custom e-mail domain that can be used to create multiple, disposable e-mail addresses. For example, Urbas might use the address ebay@eurbas.mailshell.com when bidding on items at Ebay.com. That way, if any address begins receiving unwanted e-mail, the user simply cancels the account.

Mailshell also forwards e-mail sent to the domain to the users' existing account. The company has about 750,000 registered users -- nearly double the levels seen just two months ago, Urbas said. Mailshell's basic service is free, but consumers wanting more bells and whistles such as increased storage space, can pay $29.95 a year.

Keep in mind, however, that will filters have the potential to "over protect" and weed out legitimate e-mails, experts said.

"It's worth checking spam folders to make sure there's nothing you don't need in there," advised Jared Blank, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix.

One step ahead

Filters are gaining more traction with consumers, but shouldn't be viewed as a consumers only recourse against intrusive e-mails. That's why Junkbusters offers consumers a few tips to clear of spammer's radar screen:

• Reduce your exposure to "harvesting." Don't display your e-mail address in public more than necessary.
• Request anonymity from sources of addresses. If you use an online service that offers a member directory, opt out of it; they are favorites of spammers.
• Report spammers to ISPs and e-mail providers. The instructions given in spam to have your name removed from the spammer's lists are often bogus because the return address may not exist.
• Be cautious also about sites where you can register to have your e-mail address removed from spammer's lists. Some are ineffective; others actually add your address to other lists.

Overall, common sense can be a consumers' most effective move in curbing spam.

Said MailShell's Urbas: "Right now people give out their e-mail address to virtually anyone that asks for it. If people treat e-mail addresses like their credit card number, they would dramatically cut down the spam they get."