Ten Ways to Avoid Spam

1.Maintain at least two email addresses. You should use your private address only for personal correspondence. The public address should be the one you use to register on public forums, in chat rooms, to subscribe to mailing lists etc.

2.Never publish your private address on publicly accessible resources.

3.Your private address should be difficult to spoof. Spammers use combinations of obvious names, words and numbers to build possible addresses. Your private address should not simply be your first and last name. Be creative and personalize your email address.

4.If you have to publish your private address electronically, mask it to avoid having it harvested by spammers. Joe.Smith@yahoo.com is easy to harvest, as is Joe.Smith at yahoo.com. Try writing Joe-dot-Smith-at-yahoo-dot-com instead. If you need to publish your private address on a web-site, do this as a graphics file rather than as a link.

5.Treat your public address as a temporary one. Chances are high that spammers will harvest your public address fairly quickly. Don't be afraid to change it often.

6.Always use your public address to register in forums, chat rooms and to subscribe to mailing lists and promotions. You might even consider using a number of public addresses in order to trace which services are selling addresses to spammers.

7.Never respond to spam. Most spammers verify receipt and log responses. The more you respond, the more spam you will receive.

8.Do not click on unsubscribe links from questionable sources. Spammers send fake unsubscribe letters in an attempt to collect active addresses. You certainly don't want to have your address tagged as active, do you? It will just increase the amount of spam you receive.

9.If your private address is discovered by spammers - change it. This can be inconvenient, but changing your email address does help you avoid spam - at least for a while!

10.Make sure that your mail is filtered by an antispam solution. Consider installing a personal antispam solution. Only open email accounts with providers who offer spam filtration prior to mail delivery.