Spam by the ‘letter’?

Did you know the first letter of your email address might determine how much spam you get?

According to a new study conducted by UK computer scientist Dr. Richard Clayton, addresses starting with an "A," "M" or "S" received about 40 percent more spam than other email addresses that start with another letter. On the flipside, those beginning with a "Q," "Z" or "Y" received about 20 percent less spam, on average.

This University of Cambridge study analyzed roughly 550 million junk mail messages between February 1 and March 27, 2008.

Dr. Clayton says these so-called "dictionary" attacks attempt to find a live address by cycling through common English names, such as Steve, Mary or Adam, followed by trying different domains tied to the same first name, such as adamr@hotmail.com, adamr@yahoo.com or adamr@gmail.com.

On a related note, I’ve received a lot of email from frustrated computer users who can’t seem to lick the spam problem. What’s that – you don’t have an erectile dysfunction problem and you aren’t interested in buying overseas stocks or a fake Rolex?

If you use Microsoft Outlook, a free plug-in program called SPAMfighter dramatically reduces the amount of junk mail you get by segregating suspicious messages and dropping it into a folder.

While free, SPAMfighter adds a "signature" to the end of your outgoing emails that is meant to spread the word about the software (and no, you can’t remove it), plus the company hopes you’ll upgrade to the paid version with additional bells and whistles. But wow, it really works.