Spam Email

These days, we've passed the hay day for spammers. Admittedly limited laws have come into place in many developed countries, which work to some extent. The problem now really lies with less developed countries. Follow the advice here and you can avoid spam all together.

If you're email address is already receiving spam, it can be difficult to stop that, so be prepared to start a fresh. Firstly, so you know where you stand, search in your favourite search engine for your email address. This will quickly show you if any websites that you've registered for are publically displaying your email address - if they are, remove it immediately, whether by editing your account details or deleting your account entirely. Often in these cases, you may not be able to remove it yourself, in which case a polite but direct email to the website owners should sort matters. Let them know exactly which page your email address is on, and that you would like it removed immediately. Point out that other users are hardly going to be over the moon that this website is allowing their email addresses to be publically displayed for anyone to see.

Prevention

If you post to a mailing list, use an address setup just for unimportant email, that won't bother you too much if it starts receiving spam.
If you use instant messaging software, you should use the same 'spam' address. Instant messaging viruses are common, and can easy supply the creater with a list of someones contacts and their emails.
Always be wary of the websites you enter your email address into.

Website Owners

If you run a website yourself, never display an email address on a public page. If you want people to be able to contact you, set up a simple contact form that will forward messages to your email address.

Canary Trap

The single best way of protecting yourself from spam, is to use multiple email addresses. This isn't as time consuming as it sounds. All that's required is the purchase of a domain name, and the set up of a 'catch all' email address.

For example: you purchase the domain www.nospam.com, and create a catch all email address, forwarding all emails to yourname@nospam.com. This then allows you to send email to anything@nospam.com, sillyname@nospam.com or whatever you like - you'll receive all these emails to the address yourname@nospam.com.

Now, whenever you register with a new website, or online service, you can enter a unique email address - it works well to use the websites address. This way you can keep track of your login details, and you'll immediately know if a site has begun using your address for spam.