Besides storage space, Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail will start claiming that their spam filters rate better than rest.

These online powerhouses hope to attract users with promise of cutting down and even eliminating avalanche of get-rich-quick, pornography, and ink-jet cartridge offers (among others) that bombard virtually anyone with an email account more than 15 minutes old.

This will, however, lead to another problem that many of them won't talk about, which involves filtering legitimate email as spam.

Unfortunately, sword cuts both ways on this issue.

So where does it all end? Never! Hotmail will enter fray with expanded storage capacity as well as promise of less spam and a more "friendly" interface to make your email life even easier.

Yahoo! and Hotmail will most likely copy Google and start serving context sensitive advertising based on content of each email message as it get viewed.

Privacy advocates will weigh in to claim that all of filtering and serving of ads based on an email message's content violates our rights to privacy and heralds arrival of "Big Brother."

But all this jockeying for position and enticing users from one email service to another actually represents a great boon for average Internet user.

It will force three of Web's biggest players to wake up and improve their services after 2 or 3 years of "business as usual" and we can all expect a few valuable innovations to result.

So how can you be sure you haven't been blacklisted? Unfortunately, you really can't be 100% sure. You may be on someone's black list and not even know it, and be added to and removed from black lists at drop of a hat. The only way to prevent being blacklisted unfairly is to use today's technology to keep track of it all. There is cutting-edge software technology available that checks all major black lists like Spamcop, MAPS, and SPAMHaus to ensure your domain or ISP hasn't been added.

Taking a few moments to understand and solve your potential blacklisting problem can mean a world of difference in your bottom line.

--------------------------

Author Karen Fegarty is with MailWorkZ creator of Black List Monitor-- advanced service that continuously checks all major blacklists for you, and then some. Don't be treated unfairly! Keep a handle on who may have you blacklisted. Get a free trial and find out more at http://www.blacklistmonitor.com.

--------------------------

Author Karen Fegarty is with MailWorkZ the creator of Black List Monitor-- advanced service that continuously checks all the major blacklists for you, and then some. Don't be treated unfairly! Keep a handle on who may have you blacklisted. Get a free trial and find out more at http://www.blacklistmonitor.com.