How is the best way for you the end user to deal with spam that you receive?  The first suggestion is to never respond to it. I have a hard time using the word never because there is a time and a place to respond to unwanted e-mail and asked to be removed from their mailing list. But after you have sent your request to be removed to the Best Buy and Sears mailing list, that would be the beginning of never. If you are receiving e-mail from a reputable company, then you can be pretty well assured that if you request to be removed from the list, then that is what will happen. These large companies spend millions of dollars in advertising and they are not going to mess it up by not doing something as simple as not sending you unwanted e-mail. After you deal with any of the large companies e-mail then I would say never respond to unwanted e-mail. By responding you are telling them that this is a valid e-mail address and by doing so you will be flooded by even more spam because your address will be sold even more.

Another item is never to buy anything advertised in spam. If you buy products that are advertised in spam you are helping to promote the premise that spam is OK. Everything that you buy will help to spread the use of spam because they will see that it is a valid use of their marketing dollars. If you don’t buy from them you will be helping to eliminate the use of spam by not making the spam profitable for them.

The next item is not to post your e-mail address on your Website. This is a great way for your customers or friends to contact you but it is also a great for the spammers to get your e-mail address. They have programs that will search the Web for any text that resembles something@somewhere. When this type of text is found it is placed in a database and these lists are sold by companies as an e-mail address list. Your best bet is to use a form that will forward the message from your Web visitors to you. This allows them to contact you without having your e-mail address. When you reply to them they will have a valid e-mail address to contact you with.

Another good suggestion is to use a second e-mail address when you are in newsgroups. You can get a Hotmail or Yahoo account for nothing. These can be checked out on the Web away from your regular e-mail. Or you could have an extra e-mail address with your ISP that you would use for these types of occasions. These e-mail addresses could be changed periodically to eliminate spam entirely.

Don’t give your e-mail address without knowing how and when it will be used. If someone is asking for your e-mail address you should know who they are and what they need your e-mail address for. If you are asking them a question or trying to buy something then give them your “change when you need to” address. Use your real e-mail address for your friends and family. If a Website needs your address they should be able to provide you with a link to their privacy statement that will detail their use of your address. If they cannot provide a privacy statement or you are not satisfied with the contents you can either choose not to give them your address or give them the spaminator address. This way you have control over the use of your real address as well as the choice of when to change your trash address.

The last suggestion I would have for you would be to use a spam filter. Microsoft Outlook has a pretty good rules wizard that will send spam directly to the deleted items folder. There are programs available that will filter your mail and take out the items that you choose not to see based on where the e-mail is coming from as well as keywords that are included in the address, subject line or the text of the e-mail. They are usually set up with some basic rules that will filter out most of the bad things that we would rather not discuss here. You can add to the items as you see fit to change your viewing habits.

If you want to go a step further, there are companies available on the Internet that use an e-mail verification system to eliminate spam.  Your incoming e-mail is passed through their servers and the sender is sent a message that they must respond to in order to send e-mail to you. Spammers do not get through this process and the companies say that they can eliminate 100% of your spam.

We will never be able to totally get rid of spam. But if we all follow some simple rules we can minimize the effects that it has on our daily lives and help to slow it down a bit.