Don't ever buy from spam!

If everyone adhered to this rule, there would be no spam! Unfortunately it is still worth sending it by the millions...

Use separate "freemail" accounts

When signing up for newsletters or shopping, use a separate account such as Hotmail or Yahoo. Use your main account for correspondence with your friends and family.

Don't let spammers know you got their mail

Spammers often embed image links (1 by 1 pixel GIFs) that contain the tracking number of the e-mail or your e-mail address. This is their way of verifying that you received the mail and read it.

This means turn off the Preview Panes available in most e-mail clients! Otherwise the confirmation has already been sent and you are guaranteed to receive more spam!

If you absolutely have to know what the letter contains...

• ...set your e-mail reader to only display the contents in plain text
• ...or view the message properties. Example Outlook Express:
  • Right-click a downloaded message
  • Choose Properties
  • Go the Details tab
  • Click on Message Source
  • View the source
• You should be able to decipher what the message contains. Warning signs that it is spam:
  • Obvious spam products being sold...
  • No plain text, rather just HTML link to a billboard image on another server
  • Undecipherable text. Text that is encoded to circumvent spam filters; the e-mail client automatically decodes the e-mail on opening into an HTML formatted message, but again, by doing that you will notify the sender that your e-mail address is valid. Again, more spam will be coming!

Don't ever reply to unsubscribe

If you adhere to the prior tip, you won't ever have to worry about this one. Even though unsubscribing might get you of this one list, it will more likely get you on a hundred more.

Use spam filters

Use your ISP's filters or purchase your own. A few good ones:

Cloudmark's SpamNet
MailFrontier

Want to more about spam?

Here are some excellent resources:

Abuse.Net
The Spamhaus Project