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PROBLEM You're drowning in unsolicited e-mail messages.

SOLUTION Filter your incoming e-mail, contact your Internet service provider, and hunt down the culprits.

Want to make $1500 a week stuffing envelopes? Learn how to foretell the future? Make moonshine in your kitchen? Everything you need may be as close as your e-mail in-box. Unsolicited, bulk-distributed messages are clogging the Net. They can paralyze your Internet service provider's mail system, tie up your modem, and just plain get on your nerves.

Ask James A. Cooley, a self-employed researcher, government policy analyst, and writer in Austin, Texas. Cooley is one of the countless unhappy recipients of junk e-mail. Cooley says he relies heavily on the Net and e-mail for his business, yet nearly three-fourths of the daily messages he receives are of the unsolicited, commercial variety.

"Junk e-mail is all punishment and no reward," says Cooley. "Spam threatens the reliability of my Internet service. It sends unwanted porno advertisements into my home. But most of all, it's a big waste of my time.

While the spam onslaught can seem overwhelming, you can do a number of things to control it. Here are some strategies, provided by Cooley and Ray Everett-Church, an independent Internet consultant in Washington, D.C., and cofounder of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, an antispam organization