Whoever has an email account with one of the big email providers will sooner or later find him/herself drowning in spam. Great, especially when the sight of 'You have 25 new emails in your inbox' has made your day seconds earlier. Yes, there are 25 emails indeed. Only that the senders are people that don't exist. And they offer you discount phones, porn or holidays. Nice of them, isn't it.

Apart from those rather obvious spam mails, there's the ones from supposed friends who kindly added you to their very own 'hilarious' joke or chain letter lists. How many times have YOU filled in the 'Is the glass of water half full or half empty?' (empty, of course!) and 'do you sleep with a cuddly toy?' (that'd be telling!) questionnaire? Surely, if the senders really are your friends, you should know that much about them, anyway. And then there's always the 'experts' who recklessly hit 'reply all' and you get the same questions ten more times. Thanks a lot, sister's-boyfriend's-best-mate's-flatmate! I'm glad to hear that you do sleep with a cuddly toy and that you're wearing a pair of hilariously coloured Wallace & Gromit socks as we speak.

Even more annoying than these questionnaires are those emails that trick you into undertaking further actions, and they usually hit you when you're just about bored enough to do so. Think 'Matchmaker.com' and think no further. I spent about an hour with that the other day, making up emailadresses and filling them in little boxes (should your email be joe.bloggs@hotmail.com or verystupid@yahoo.com, consider yourself added to some pretty atrocious mailinglists!) determined to find out who was taking the piss this time. Needless to say that I failed miserably.

Another favourite of mine are the 'you have won $1.000.000' ones. Great, so I could win a huge amount of money if I a) move to the States, b) grow a wacky moustache and c) my skin is green with purple blotches. Thank you, Winhourly.com, I really appreciate that.

Bulkmail folders offer an easy solution to this problem. In theory, anyway. The trouble is that they also filter out stuff you actually wanted to read. Duh. And whoever kindly signed me up to the 'Daily Joke Archive': DIE! DIE! DIE!