MEMPS: the new must-have Syndrome for the serious e-mail user.

It's a new disorder to arrive on the continent, if not the globe and soon the galaxy. MEMPS is short for Mulitple-E-Mail Personality Syndrome. We're all going to have it soon if we do not have it already.

It's impossible and completely unwise to try to survive on the Internet using only one e-mail address. Spain solutions and proposed laws are being tossed around furiously these days but don't think that any of them will be effective in the near future. The best immediate line of defense is to divide up your identity strategically into different e-mail addresses. Ideally these should be e-mail boxes that you can check from the same e-mail client.

Yes, some people say they use their Hotmail or Yahoo account for stuff they never read. But it's hard to sign on to another service and physically check another email box. I think most people never do get to read what's in a mailbox far from their regular e-mail "track."

In Outlook you can create separate accounts with separate login instructions that will check POP3 boxes around the Net. In Eudora Pro these separate accounts are called Personalities.

Whatever software the multiple e-mail user works with to set it up, this system of partitioning your e-mail identity requires discipline. What you're hoping for by succumbing to MEMPS is to eliminate, or at the very least to control the flow of spam into your e-mail box. Because at the heart of the Syndrome is your most private e-mail address that you only give to those with whom you communicate with on the most important level. This e-mail name must never be used on web sites or discussion groups or even on business cards or in print directories. It's the equivalent of an unlisted phone number.

Next you create an e-mail address for things you opt-in for: newsletters, offers, alerts. If you see this address being abused you can turn it off.

You could forward all your addresses into one or two e-mail boxes and when any sign of abuse shows up redirect the abused address to another mailbox or kill it entirely.

But the lesson of MEMPS is certain: even with filters, spaminators and spam cops, the end user will remain vulnerable to spam for a long time to come and is in need of some front line offensive. Streamlining the handling of multiple e-mail boxes has proven to be the most practical solution for me.