How to Avoid Spam (Like the Plague)

Create yourself two email accounts. The first email account should have your first name and your last name in it; this email address is for serious, personal communications. The second email account has no restrictions for a username; this email account is for those pesky registration pages and websites that require you enter an email in order to access or contribute to them.

Don't publish your professional email address online, ever. And never under any circumstances submit your professional email address to a website in order to gain access or contribute to that site, whether they tell you they'll keep it confidential or not. For example, I made the mistake of putting samoya@hotmail.com online, and now I get no less than 100 spam emails a day. Luckily, this isn't my professional email address.

Never click on emails that are sent to your professional email account that are from people you don't know or a conversation you don't remember. Sometimes spam emails are sent with a notice of receipt function on them, letting the person who emailed you know that you opened the email. Opening spam emails only encourages spammers to keep sending you spam.

Don't reply to or forward forwarded emails from friends and coworkers unless it's absolutely necessary. Often times email collection services (spammers) will send a joke, an alarming notice, or a warning of doom out to a number of people hoping that people will forward the email to their friends and their friends will forward it again, eventually leaving a very long list of email addresses on the original message, to be collected later.

Don't respond to any emails from strangers with your professional email address unless you're absolutely certain this person is contacting you for the right reasons. Spammers will often send emails out to collect personal information from you under the guise of a professional inquiry; this is called phishing (the electronic equivalent of fishing) for email addresses. Make sure you don't bite for spammers.

Spam Filters & Spam Protection Software

There is plenty of spam filter software out there, and chances are your internet service provider already has a spam filter applied to your complementary email account. These spam filters that your ISP uses can often be more of nuisance than a solution. I can't count the number of times my father's ISP has deleted my emails to him because of their finicky spam filters. So, sometimes it's a good idea to call your ISP and have them take the filters off so you can allow a better spam protection software (run on your own computer) take care of your spam emails.

Most spam protection suites do at least two things: first they use a list of keywords used most often by spammers to filter out a great majority of the junk mail you're getting. Emails with content that includes words having to do with sexual dysfunctions and fast cars are weeded out from emails that do not include these words, emails that your mother might send you, for instance. Second, spam protection programs will often ask you for a list of emails you know, contacts they're called, and then make sure that any email that doesn't include known keywords but contains a an unrecognized address gets flagged by the program so you can peruse and delete if it turns out to be spam.