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The best advice? Simply delete.

Another caveat is to beware of cookies and similar tech techniques. No, this isn't diet advice. When you visit a Web site for the first time, it can create a Windows temporary file with the site's graphics. The next time you visit that site, it will pop up faster. While this quicker download may seem like a bonus, it also can come with another side. One Web trend is to track how many people come to the site, what pages they view and how often they return.

Amazon uses tracking software that gives it information about the user. That's called cookies, and it's how Amazon knows that last time you visited its site you purchased Tom Clancy's latest book and this time you'll probably want John Grisham's new novel.

"We can opt to deny all cookies in our browser. But the influx of Spyware has altered the playing field," says Ziogas. "Spyware operates cookies at a higher level than your browser can stop. It is now embedding cookies into the fundamental core of the computer called the registry, where it is difficult to block. The registry functions like a table of contents for your computer."

Spyware is much more ferocious because, unbeknownst to the user, you're seeing more and more pop-ups (sometimes 10 to 20 at a time), and you're just trying to get to Google.

"When you go online, the marketing company that snagged your information via spam says, 'Hey, Jane's online, let's send her stuff.' As a result, you can't go anywhere online without pop-ups," Ziogas says.

Spybot Search and Destroy (available free from www.download.com) also can detect and remove adware sites from your computer.

Options to can the spam

How much of your day is spent dealing with unwanted e-mails? A few minutes, a half-hour? Do you even track how much time your employees spend?

In round numbers, KGN Financial Group, with nearly 100 people on staff, receives anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 unsolicited e-mails per day. Some users get 50 to 200 each day. It can take up to a half-hour or more for each user to close unwanted pop-ups or delete unwanted e-mail. That adds up to 30 minutes each day, five days a week, which means out of a 40-hour work week, two-and-a-half hours can involve lost productivity while dealing with spam.

So how much are we talking about financially? According to PKF's Price, an average employee hourly rate is $50. There are 2,080 work hours in a year. If your sales goals for the year are $500,000, the cost of being down for one hour is $240.

Now multiply that times 20 sales people and it just cost your business nearly $5,000 to be down for one hour. A half-day event could cost your business up to $100,000. "Suddenly that $10,000 network security fee doesn't look so bad," says Price.

Fortunately, technology is responding with more and more solutions. Spam-filtering software is embedded in your e-mail program, such as Microsoft Outlook. But if you're truly bombarded, there's not enough time to tell the e-mail program what to keep and what to delete, marginalizing its effectiveness.

There are other options to combat spam. Ad-aware is a shareware program that costs about $15 to $45 for a 2MB download. Ad-aware finds as many as 300 different Spyware programs tracking what you do online and asks that you be removed from the lists.

However, for each bit of progress, spammers seem to have more sophisticated responses. Now marketing companies have software that changes users. You can purchase more sophisticated add-on software (about $30 to $50) to sit on your hard drive, though. It's a better solution than spam-filtering software, but it's not the magic bullet, according to Ziogas.

For larger companies, there is the SurfControl program. At a cost of $1,500 to $2,000 for a 100-user license, this sophisticated software can be put on a single computer (even a low-end computer) to act as a server. All incoming mail comes to this computer first, which then filters the mail before sending it on to its intended recipient.

It can screen for categories such as sex, alcohol, drugs, shopping, jokes, etc. The software assigns a filtering value for certain keywords that fit those categories. When a keyword appears multiple times (such as the word 'buy'), the spam will be blocked.

Ziogas warns that although this is a solid system, it's important that each company apply filtering values based on its industry. "You need to make sure that certain company names are not on the exclusion list, including your clients," he says.

He recommends that you start with a higher tolerance and let more spam through. You can tighten the filter as you begin to assess what is getting through. "It takes one to two months to adjust the filters to cause the least amount of pain to the users," says Ziogas.

There also are SurfControl monitor sites to which you can send junk e-mail and have the senders added to the database. For a maintenance fee of $500 to $1,500, you can receive updated lists (often daily) of known spammers' sites.

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