Everybody hates spam. Indeed, it is a wonder that anyone is still spamming as any computer user would have to be insane to actually purchase a product or service that they've become aware of through a spammed email. That reality doesn't seem to affect the avalanche of spam which is still increasing apparently immune to any attempts to legislate against it.

Many people believe that hitting an "unsubscribe" link in an email will actually keep you from getting more spam from that particular sender when indeed all it does is prove that the account is "live" thus opening you up to much more spam. Plus, if you have to be told to never ever ever open an attachment file that arrives from an unsolicited source, then you must have been living in a cave for the past couple of decades.

The best way to avoid ending up on the spam lists is to not broadcast your email address, unless absolutely necessary. The leading methods that spammers get hold of your email is when you foolishly give it to them, via a web based registration form, online survey, or newsgroup, forum and public message board posting. If you have your own website, don't put your email on it. HTML mailto code is a major way that spammers harvest email addresses using automatic bots and spiders that trawl the web looking for that very chunk of code. If you have to place your email address somewhere on the net, you should do it in a modified format where it is clear what the email should be but isn't typed that way on the page such as

myname at hotmail dot com

or

myname-@-hotmail-.-com

or even really stealthy methods like

myname at verywarmmail dot com.

You may also choose to use a spamblock, which is an email address that has been altered by the insertion of a supplementary word, such as SPAMBLOCK or NOSPAM, such as

myNOSPAMname@hotmail.com

The problem with spamblocks is that the spammers' latest bots and spiders have learned those tactics and will seek out the email addresses that have been spamblocked and just strip the supplementary word out of them.

By far the best solution is to use multiple email addresses. I currently have 11 email addresses on my Thunderbird email client and there are about another dozen that I don't check continually so I just access them via their webmail interfaces when I want. You certainly don't need two dozen email addresses but will likely be able to get along just swimmingly with two: One which you can bandy about the net with wild abandon and then just sift through the mountain of spam you'll receive, and another that you guard more jealously than your stamp collection and that you release only to close family, friends and business associates. Just make sure that you don't set your junk mail box settings too restrictively on your spam-friendly account, or you'll find that even the messages you did want to get are tossed into the junk mail. I can't believe that millions of people have their junk mail boxes set at automatic delete, as any legitimate emails that arrive and are wrongly delegated to junk status will be immediately deleted and you'll never know you ever received them!

Spam can be managed by a few simple precautions, and there are few email sights more pleasing than opening up your inbox and finding only emails from people you know!

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