I have effectively blocked most SPAM email. However my filters are bypassed when a freind or family member decides to forward a chain email, random joke of the day email, or SPAM message to me. I don't want to seem like a jerk and tell them to stop sending me "Funny Jokes!" or "How Bill Gates will pay me $500 to forward this email" I once replied to a family member telling him the Bill Gates email was not true. He replied he knew it was not true yet he was forwarding at a coworkers request. It's a pain when I have 5 minutes to download my email at the airport and it gets caught up downloading 5MB of "funny videos".

So the real question is how to combat unwanted email from friends and family without blocking email you want.