Whereas chain letters feed only off of stupidity, and can be combated with education and rolled-up newspapers, advertising is different. Advertising feeds off of both stupidity and pure evil. Pure dripping evil.
My current solution for spam is to automatically quarantine any e-mail with specific words in the subject line. My close friends need not worry, because they're filtered to special inboxes beforehand. Besides, no one should be subjecting about most of this stuff anyway. Also, anyone who only puts their first name on their return address is risking a quick trip to the trashcan.
This is the current list of banned words in my e-mail subject lines (warning, this list includes profanity):