Two annoying "features" of the Internet are pop-up windows that clutter your screen with ads, and spam. Mozilla 1.4, the open-source web browser, has tools to combat both, and to top it off, it's free.

The Mozilla browser and e-mail package is essentially the same as Netscape 7; in fact, Netscape 7 was developed from the Mozilla software code. Mozilla/Netscape used to be part of the AOL/Time Warner empire, but was cut loose in July, 2003 into its own non-profit organization, the Mozilla Foundation at http://www.mozilla.org/

The pop-up controls were in an earlier version of Mozilla. When you turn the controls on, they prohibit your browser from opening up any new windows, unless you actually click on a link. Do this by clicking Edit, Preferences, Privacy & Security, Popup Windows.

While parts of the spam, or junk mail, controls were in Mozilla 1.3, they increased in functionality in Mozilla 1.4. Mozilla uses Bayesian filtering for determining what's junk. Not up on Bayesian techniques? The theory isn't important. What matters is how it works. Essentially it watches you classify mail as either junk or not, and learns from your examples.

When spam arrives in your inbox, you select it and then click the "Junk Mail" button on the menu before you delete the mail. After a couple of days, Mozilla should learn what you think is junk, and what isn't.

Then, within Mozilla Mail, set up a local folder called "Junk". Then click Tools, Junk Mail Controls to enable the junk mail controls. For more on how this works, you can see a tutorial at http://www.bjkresearch.com/tips/t030730.html.

One worry with spam controls is the problem of "false positives". This is when legitimate mail gets marked as junk. The Junk Mail controls do have an option that won't mark any mail as junk if it comes from the address of someone in your Personal Address Book. (That is a problem, of course, if you really do know those widows of Nigerian generals.) I've been using the junk mail controls for over a week now, and the only two false positives were on email newsletters.

If crushing pop-ups and disposing of spam weren't enough reasons, don't forget that Mozilla is free. You can download the latest version at http://www.mozilla.org/releases/#1.4, with versions available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, OS/2, and most flavors of Unix. Even newer versions of Mozilla are available for testing, but as of 7/2003, this is the latest stable version.

Since Microsoft will not be releasing a new version of Internet Explorer until the next version of Windows, Mozilla may also leap-frog its way into the technological lead. If you've got a broadband connection, the 12 MB download is a snap. Even at slower speeds, it still may be something you want to check out.