There are a number of things you can do to help reduce the amount of spam that you receive. These methods can be divided into two categories; Prevention and Filtration.
Prevention
There are many ways in which to reduce the amount of spam you receive, from common sense to obscurity. Below is a short list on the most common methods used to stop spammers harvesting your email addresses.
- Never give your email address out liberally. Only give it to people you trust.
- Setup a "throw away", or disposable email address for general use.
- Use a fake address on signup forms, if you dont think they need it, dont give it to them.
- Dont post your address. When using message boards, etc, obscure your address with hidemyemail.net
- Dont answer spam. EVER!. Most unsubscribe links in email actually confirm that your address is valid.
- Opt Out. When signing up or buying products online, be sure that you arent being added to any newsletters.
- Dont add your address to your website, even in the HTML code!
- Use contact forms for website feedback.
Filtration
Despite our best efforts, you will still occassionaly receive some spam emails. In order to combat spam further you can use email filters.
All of the major email programs, and many web based services, supply a method to filter out emails based on specified criteria. This allows you to block messages from known spammers, websites and emails containing certain words. Be careful when blocking emails based on their content, as you dont want to delete messages from your friends and family.
Some internet providers will also help filter out known spam emails and often setup a spam rating system to help with your own filters.
Check out the support documentation for your email program for advice on how to setup email filters.
If you happen to own your own domain, when filling out online forms, you can create an email forward that is constructed to include the name of the website you are signing up with, this way, should you receive any junk email, you will know exactly where it came form and be able to warn others as well as setup appropriate filtering.
Resources
You can find more information, resources and methods of preventing spam in our Spam FAQ and by following the links below.
