They may be mavens of mops and wizards of washing machines. But spam-fighting knowhow? The Consumer Reports team is sliding down the wrong side of the bell curve. Here’s CR’s spam grappling list, with comments by us:

1. “Don’t buy anything promoted in a spam.” Whoa. Who woulda thought?
2. “If your e-mail program has a preview pane, disable it to prevent the spam from reporting to its sender that you’ve received it.” …And lose a convenient tool? How ’bout using a content filter like trimMail Inbox to defang messages so you can continue using your preview pane without fear?
3. “Use one e-mail address for family and friends, another for everyone else. Or pick up a free one from Hotmail, Yahoo!, or a disposable forwarding-address service like www.SpamMotel.com. When an address attracts too much spam, abandon it for a new one.” Now isn’t that convenient? Again, the right equipment lets you live above-ground, like humans should.
4. “Use a provider that filters e-mail, such as AOL, Earthlink, or MSN.” Regular readers of Email Battles can attest to the veracity, value, legal hassles and outright danger of using services like these… especially for business users.
5. “Report spam to your ISP. To help the FTC control spam, forward it to uce@ftc.gov.” SPAM VOLUME x MINUTES PER SPAM x (YOUR HOURLY INCOME/60) = HOW MUCH MONEY YOU CAN AFFORD TO WASTE.
6. “If you receive a spam that promotes a brand, complain to the company behind the brand by postal mail, which makes more of a statement than e-mail.”(STAMP+STATIONARY) x SPAM VOLUME x MINUTES PER SPAM x (YOUR HOURLY INCOME/60) = HOW MUCH MORE MONEY YOU CAN AFFORD TO WASTE.
7. “If your e-mail program offers “rules” or “filters,” use one to spot messages whose header contains one or more of these terms: html, text/html, multipart/alternative, or multipart/mixed. This can catch most spams, but may also catch most of the legitimate e-mails that are formatted to look like a Web page.” File under: “Ways To Make Yourself Crazy Watching For Legitimate Messages”.
8. “Install a firewall if you have broadband so a spammer can’t plant software on your computer to turn it into a spamming machine.” Correct. Hallelujah.

So how does the world’s schoolmarm score? Two correct out of eight = 25%. Somebody’s going to be staying late after school.

Just get a good spam and content filter that won’t introduce other problems for your system. Enjoy your e-mail again.

See for yourself at Consumer Reports.