SPAM  used to just be meat in a can ... now it is filling peoples inbox at an alarming rate and guess what? It always will but there are a few things we can do to minimize it. Alot of spam can come from you signing up for something on the internet and leaving a box ticked somewhere. It is important to read the screen at each stage of signing up for something or installing a program.

If you consent by leaving a box ticked that says 'Receive email about updates' or somehting similiar you may be asking to be advertised at.

WHAT CAN I DO TO MINIMIZE IT?

Users of the New Zealand service "Xtra" will no doubt be familiar with spam and how annoying it can be after the companies failed attempt in 2007 at discontinuing the SMTP protocol to send mail. Here is what i do to stop spam and i very rarely receive any!!

Open a free online mail account just for sign ups.

Hotmail, gmail, z6, yahoo and inbox.com are some of the many services that offer free email.  Sign up for an account and when filling out forms on the internet use this new SPAM account.

Redirect your mail through a reliable spam filter. 

Personally i use GMAIL and i have found their spam filters extremely effective. This is the only email account i check. If i join with an ISP like 'Xtra' and they give me a new email account, i change the settings to redirect all mail to my gmail account. This way if i decide to change ISP or they go 'belly up' I will be no worse off. The email is first filtered by the ISP then passed onto GMAIL where it is filtered a semcond time. I have three email accounts all redirected into my one reliable GMAIL account. I doubt that the google owned GMAIL will be going anywhere in a hurry.

Obfuscate website email address

This is nerd speak for disguising your email address on your website. Robots constantly scour the internet looking for websites that have a 'plain text' email address and add it to their record of emails to spam at. If your email address is picked up by one of these bots ... it could lead to you receiving around 200-300 unwanted emails per day! To see if you are at risk go to your website ... right click on the webpage body and choose 'view source' of the page. Now on your keyboard hold down ctrl and press F ... type your email address in and press enter. This will search your source code for your email address. If it finds a match then you are at high risk. Your webmaster can rectify this by implementing a PHP script or something similiar to handle the emails.

Don't add yourself to chain emails

You know the ones. They tell you to pass this email on to 5 more people and then you receive an email from microsoft saying you inherit the entire microsoft fortune or something equally as stupid. THIS REALLY WORKS is also common to see. What have you got to lose? Well for one thing you are adding your plain text email address onto a list of gullible people that spammers will have no trouble targetting. They may be light hearted emails and a bit of fun ... but unless you want 'Penis enlargement patches' or 'Viagra' spammed at you i suggest you steer clear of these chain emails.

Install spam fighting software

To be honest i have never had the need to run such software. The truth is ... spam will always be around and it will evolve and mature into different forms just as quickly as these softwares can search and destroy them. There is big money in advertising  and while these spammers are funded they will continue to increase and become smarter.