DEAR ABBY: Will you please advise me on how to tell our computer friends not to send "junk" e-mail? My husband and I are annoyed with all the chain letters, jokes, cartoons, opinion letters, cutesy pictures, etc. we are receiving. I don't bother to read them, but deleting them is time-consuming.
Why do people assume we're interested when we never asked for this kind of stuff? All it does is fill up our mailboxes.
I stopped passing along this form of entertainment years ago, but people still keep sending the rubbish, even when I politely ask them to stop. Changing my e-mail address won't help. I want to correspond with friends, and do not want to hurt their feelings. I just want to eliminate the trash. Any suggestions on what we can say or do to stop the junk? -- OVERFLOWING IN TRAVERSE CITY, MICH.
DEAR OVERFLOWING: Maybe you're being too polite. You need to be firm and specific. Reply to an unwanted e-mail by telling the sender that you aren't interested in this kind of "entertainment." Eventually, your friends will get the message.