Her Clearwater company, Data Resource Consulting, sends out as many as 40 million unsolicited commercial e- mails - or spam - per week. And business is booming: She recently moved from Dunedin into bigger digs in Clearwater.

But one thing really grates on her: antispam groups such as The Spamhaus Project of England and Seattle's SpamCop, who police the Internet for junk e-mail. Their blacklists, or ``block lists,'' of known spammers block millions of spam e-mails from reaching people's in-boxes daily.

And although it's not a perfect system - the antispammers occasionally slip up and label someone unfairly as a spammer - their blacklists are enormously influential with Internet service providers.

``This is the equivalent of blocking our front door when the junk mail truck arrives,'' said Steve Linford, director of The Spamhaus Project. ``No mailer has a right to force unwanted junk onto anyone else.''

ISPs and state governments are virtually at war with spam.

About 30 states, but not Florida, have legislation curbing e-mails that tout anything from cheap loans, African investment schemes and body- part enhancements. But most only prohibit deceptive e- mails, such as spam that misleads people about its sender.

Last week, California Gov. Gray Davis signed what may be the nation's most far- reaching antispam law. Among other things, California's law:

* Bans most types of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

* Targets both the spam senders and the companies that advertise with it.

* Provides penalties of up to $1 million.

Meanwhile, nationwide many ISPs and Web hosting companies have their own antispam rules and threaten to cut service to anyone found spamming.

On the front lines of this high-tech war is Linford, whose nonprofit Spamhaus is considered among the world's leading spam vigilantes. Linford and the other 16 Spamhaus Project volunteers pursue spammers by running sting operations. He creates an e-mail account for a fictional person, and ``anything that arrives at that address is guaranteed to be unsolicited,'' Linford said.

Spamhaus then tracks the spam to the ``server'' computer that sent it and puts the server on its Spamhaus Block List. Spamhaus provides the list free to ISPs, which block any e-mail coming from listed servers, Linford said. Spamhaus also maintains a list of the world's worst spammers, called the Register of Known Spam Operations, on its Web site, at www.spamhaus.org Linford's work makes him vilified by spammers. That includes the following e-mail threat from a South Florida spammer: ``You are a dead man. As god ad [sic] my witness you will die soon. Horrid, violent death.''

Taking a different approach in the spam wars is SpamCop.net, which is operated by Julian Haight from his Seattle home.

Haight develops his list from public complaints. People can go onto his Web site, at www.spamcop.net including its sender and body information. Spam e-mails contain enough coding information that SpamCop then can determine their origin, Haight said.

SpamCop gets 100,000 complaints a day, which Haight allows people to enter for free. However, unlike the nonprofit Spamhaus, SpamCop does make money by selling e-mail filtering systems, Haight said.

Spamhaus, SpamCop and other antispammers appear to have enormous sway with ISPs and Web hosting companies. Spamhaus alone, Linford said, is used by ISPs with a combined 160 million customers.

Locally, Bright House Networks, which operates the Road Runner high-speed online service in Tampa Bay, uses Spamhaus, as well as an antispam list from the Mail Abuse Prevention System and Bright House's own internal filtering system, said Corey Fisch, Bright House's security/abuse manager.

The company recently started using Spamhaus, so Fisch could not say how effective it is. But, Bright House has been pleased with MAPS, Fisch said.

Although they are heroes to some, the antispammers take their lumps from those who say they were unfairly targeted.

Treasure Island resident Ian Murphy runs a computer security firm called IAM/Secure Data Systems, which helps companies protect their computers from hackers and cyberterrorists. He also operates a Web site, at www.ravenswoodinc.com Murphy says he does not send spam, but he had a PowerPoint presentation on his Web site that mentioned a spammer. Somehow, an antispam group discovered the spammer reference on his site and blacklisted him, Murphy said. Soon after, the company that hosted his Web site dropped him. Later, he moved to another Web hoster and was dropped by that one, too, Murphy said.

A representative of Murphy's Web hoster, Lanset America Corp. of Sacramento, Calif., said he does not know if Murphy ever sent spam. But, because Murphy had been blacklisted, ISPs everywhere were blocking all e-mail from Lanset's server, even e-mail from unrelated businesses. Lanset had no choice but to drop Murphy, said the representative, who did not give his name.

Another target: St. Petersburg. A few months ago, the city discovered that some of its e-mails were not reaching their destinations, said Muslim Gadiwalla, the city's chief information officer. Through a mix-up, the city had been blacklisted, and big ISPs such as AOL were blocking the city's e-mails. The city eventually cleared up the mess with its own ISP, Bright House, Gadiwalla said.

Murphy's troubles, though, have been ongoing since May. In a recent interview, he blasted the antispammers: ``These are cyberpunks. Who appointed them? I want to see their business license.''

Those who do send spam, such as Betterly, also question the legitimacy of antispammers. Betterly has been blacklisted on occasion, but only because the antispam groups saw newspaper articles about her. She was not blacklisted because of consumer complaints, she said. Betterly also has been dropped by a Web hosting provider, she said.

``What you're talking about is interfering with commerce,'' Betterly said of the antispammers. ``There are people who are interested in seeing [commercial e-mail], and they never get to see them. It's really McCarthyism.''

In fact, the antispammers have no official mandate, Linford and Haight each acknowledge. Their only authority comes from the ISPs and Web hosting companies that use their service.

``Our right is that we run the Spamhaus Block List for our users,'' Linford said. ``These 160 million people that are protected by our SBL system give us the right, by proxy, to block anything that is against their e-mail policy.''

Anyway, the antispammers say only a tiny percentage of businesses are wrongly accused. In Tampa, MarketSmart Technologies helps businesses create ``opt-in'' e-mail marketing campaigns, in which people sign up for e-mail newsletters and product announcements. It does not deal with unsolicited e-mail.

MarketSmart President Steve Tingiris rarely hears of companies being unfairly targeted, and when someone is targeted, that person usually really is spamming, he said.

``Legitimate marketers don't want to market to people who aren't interested,'' he said.

Go to TBO.com for tips on how to control spam and where to file complaints.

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at (813) 259-7865.

LB:

LB: FIGHTING SPAM

Tips from the Federal Trade Commission on battling spam: * Avoid displaying your e-mail address in public, including in newsgroups, chat rooms, Web sites and membership directories of online services.

* Check a Web site's privacy policy before submitting your address. The policy may allow the company to share your address with third parties. Consider opting out of this provision or not submitting your address at all.

* Consider using two e-mail addresses - one for personal messages, one for newsgroups and chat rooms.

* Choose a unique e-mail address. A common name such as ``jdoe'' may get more spam than something like ``jd51x02oe,'' though the unique address may be more difficult to remember.

* Use an e-mail filter. Many service providers offer free tools to filter out spam or channel it into a bulk e-mail folder.

Others are available for purchase.

* Report spam to the Federal Trade Commission by sending the entire message, including the full header, to uce@ftc.gov.

* Complain to your Internet service provider 's abuse desk and to the sender's ISP.

* Be wary. Don't believe promises from strangers. Be skeptical of moneymaking opportunities.