Reduce your spam!
If you use E-mail, you probably get Spam. If you're not careful, you probably get more Spam than legitimate mail you want to read.
I get very little Spam, and it's because I've been following these rules since I got my first E-mail address in 1993.
1. I don't care how bad you want it, DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM SPAMMERS! If you disregard the rest of these rules, please obey this one. This helps everybody on the internet because if nobody was buying, the spammers would not bother with the scams. If you are temped to buy something, remember many spammers don't even deliver what they are selling. They just want your credit card number when you place an order. Do you know who you would chase if they never delivered what they are selling? There are plenty of reputable vendors on the internet. Find somebody you can trust, who doesn't spam, and buy from them.
2. Don't use your real address when filling out forms online. When you shop online, everybody wants your E-mail address. When you sign up for free stuff, often the bill is being paid by people who buy lists of real addresses. Often you need a real address to complete a transaction. Create a Yahoo or Hotmail address for this purpose. When that account gets overrun, abandon it. You can still keep your real address for correspondence with people you know. Remember, that address is only for real people, not forms.
3. Pick a username over 8 characters long. There are programs out there that that just blast popular mail services with every possible combination of 8 letters. Even if you have never given your address out to anybody, these programs might have guessed your address.
4. Don't put your E-mail address on your web page. There are programs that automatically surf the web looking for addresses on web pages. If you need to put contact information, put a .gif or .jpg image up that has your address on it. Let humans type the address in when they send mail. Programs will ignore it and look elsewhere.
5. When you do get spam, don't open it. You might think it's funny to get male enlargement ads if you are female, but don't even open the message. Many messages have embedded code that lets the sender know you read their mail. This lets them know three things. 1. The mail got to you - he has a valid address 2. The mail made it through any spam filters you might have 3. The mail had something in it that piqued your curiosity. You are training him to write better spam.
6. Do not respond to mail that lets you opt out. If you know which ones let you opt out, then you ignored Rule 5. I know, it happens. There is one exception to this rule. If you get repeated mail from a well-known company, you can opt out. Reputable companies will honor the request. Slimy companies will note that an unsubscribe request came in, which confirms a human is reading stuff sent to that address.
7. Read the privacy policy of any company you do business with. Even reputable companies can have shady privacy policies. Ticketmaster, for example, reserves the right to sell your address to other people. When you order online from Ticketmaster, you cannot opt out from receiving junk mail from them. I bought tickets a year ago from them and I still get three E-mails a week suggesting other shows in my area. Needless to say, that was a throw-away address and I just sign into it once a month to see if it is still getting trashed. When you find a company like that, take your business to their competition. You can buy tickets at the venue's box office instead of buying from Ticketmaster.
8. Don't use online greeting cards. It's free for you, but who do you think pays for it? The people buying your address. What's worse is the person you are sending to has no say in the matter of how their address will be used. You can just as easily find your own cute pictures and quotes or phrases and send those instead. Politely inform people who send you cards that there is an impact they are not aware of.
9. If you like to forward touching or humorous E-mails to all your friends, delete the old headers before you do. You know what I mean, right. Somebody send you a joke and you have to scroll through pages and pages of other people's E-mail addresses. Spammers have friends who send them jokes, too. They don't simply scroll down to the joke, they run that mail through a program that pulls out the thousands of valid addresses. Do your friends a favor, and delete that key information before passing it on. Put your friends' addresses in the BCC: field so that when they forward it on, they are not passing along all your friends addresses. If you get a chain letter, go ballistic! Unleash furious anger at the person who sent it to you. Many chain letters are started with the express intent of harvesting addresses for mailing lists.
10.If you have to, use spam filtering software. I don't have to, because I don't get a lot of spam, but you may have found these instructions a little too late. Read reviews before you pick your software. Some are being exposed for allowing spammers to pay them money and allow their stuff through. Others are just plain inefficient. Worse still, some block stuff that isn't spam at all. It's one thing to have to wade through stuff you don't want. It's another thing to lose stuff you do want. If you belong to mailing lists, put those senders on a white-list. That will allow them through no matter how much the message may resemble spam.
Enjoy your spam-free internet experience.