Cutting Into Spam

Does it seem as if you are receiving more and more spam every day? Is your inbox becoming clogged with messages promoting cheap drugs, sex videos, offshore pharmacies, Viagra, get rich schemes, body part enlargements, work at home scams guaranteed to make you wealthy in 2 weeks and so on and so forth?

There are some simple steps that anyone can take to cut into the flood of spam. Individually, each step helps but if layered together, your control over spam drastically increases.

1. If you have choices, deal with a service provider that provides some level of spam filtering. While hardly foolproof, this is a good start.

2. Do not use your primary personal email address when registering on web sites. Use a free email account from gmail, yahoo or hotmail. Best of all, if this free address becomes spam clogged, you can simply stop using it and create a new address.

3. Even if your ISP provides spam filtering, you can add a layer of protection by using personal spam filtering tools. Some of these tools function as a plugin for your favorite email client, others work as stand alone programs. There are many free and paid products available but be sure that you are are dealing with a reputable source such as CNET Download.com.

4. Do not reply to any spam messages including the 'unsubscribe' message that is usually found at the bottom of the message. All this does is confirm to the spammer that yours is a valid email address that is being read.


Spam is never going to go away. For every spammer that we shut down, another one crawls out from the sewers. But you do not have to be a victim, you can fight back.