The biggest complaint most people have about the internet is spam. That's understandable considering how much of it's out there. I work for an ISP and we've figured out that more than half the mail we normally receive is spam. Considering that's just the amount WE CATCH, the percentage is probably even higher.
So how do you keep your email as spam free as possible? As a long time denizen of the net and someone who works with an ISP, I've learned four things that you can do to keep the spam down to bare minimum.
Pick An Unusual User Name: One of the things spammers do is called a "dictionary attack." They'll simply pick an ISP and send emails to as many common names as they can. For example, they might send emails to jay@aol.com, jaybird@aol.com, Jo@aol.com, john@aol.com, etc., etc. Hopefully, your ISP can stop at least some of these attacks. But if you have an uncommon user name to begin with it'll make it much less likely that these dictionary attacks will effect you.
Get A "Spam Address": Go to Yahoo, Hotmail, or some other free email provider and get a second email account. Any time you have to sign up for something on the web, use that email address instead of your main email account. What some people don't understand is that web sites often sell lists of email addresses they acquire to different spammers. You may think you're just signing up to get free screen savers or to get free software, but your name may actually be going on a list somewhere that'll get passed around and sold to countless spammers. Of course, not all websites do this when you sign up for something, but a lot of them do. So why not make sure your spam is forwarded to an unimportant web based email account that you can check and clear out once a week? That's certainly preferable to receiving it in your main email account every day.
Don't Post Your Main Email Address On The Web: Spammers use something called "spider bots" to scour the web looking for email addresses. The spider bots go web page to web page hunting for email addresses. When they find one, they add it to their list and move on. Then the next thing you know you're getting spam. If you're going to post your email on a website try to use your "spam account" instead of your main account. As an alternative you can post your email address in a way that's obvious to humans, but not to the spider bots. For example, instead of mariahcarey@hotmail.com, post mariahcarey-at-hotmail.com. People will understand what you mean while the bots won't. Keep in mind that what I'm saying here applies to forums, guestbooks, member profiles, and anywhere else you may post your email address in a place that's conceivably reachable by the general public.
Don't "Click Here To Be Removed": If you do get a piece of spam, don't bother going to the bottom of the email to click on the link that says "click here to be removed." A lot of times that email address is faked to begin with. Even if it does work, many spammers simply take your address and put it on ANOTHER list as a verified email. So asking to be removed just insures that you'll get more spam.
If you follow these four rules right from the start you'll find that you'll receive very little spam.
