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If you have had an email address anywhere, for any amount of time, we are sure you have experienced some SPAM to some degree. If you are like us, you probably get pretty fed up with it. Unfortunately, it just seems to get worse, instead of better. Until the laws are better enforced, we all are going to have to learn to deal with it. We'd like to give some advice that may help aleviate the situation a bit:

1. Have at least TWO email addresses.
   
• Make one of them a "disposable" address - meaning that if you have to get rid of it eventually it won't be a big deal. We suggest using a free email address such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc for this. Use this email address as your throwaway address anytime you have to fill in any forms on the internet that you do not thoroughly trust.
  
• The other email address should be your busines address, and you should guard it more closely.
2. Use an email filter.
• We use a few different methods for this. Thunderbird email has a built in junk mail feature that works pretty darn good.
  
• Another method is AVG email virus scanner. This scans emails for potential viruses. Yep, you can get spam that contains viruses.
• Another really good step to take is to use a program called Mailwasher to sort your email before you download it off the server. It deletes, and bounces spam.
3. Turn off the preview feature.
• If your email program has a preview feature, turn it off. Whenever you open spam email, it's telling the spammer that you're getting it. And that just eggs them on to send you even more spam. You can also choose to view all email as plain text only. Either way works.
4. Never ever click on any links or respond to spammers email.
• Pretty much for the same reason above; if they know you are getting their email, it just eggs them on to send you even more junk. They will not respect your demands to cease. They do not have values!
  
5. Never list your email address online without protecting it.
• One of the most common ways for spammers to find victims is they use special software that scours the web looking for email addresses that aren't protected.
• Don't ever write it out all together -ie: you@yourdomain.com. There are many ways around this: You could type it like this instead: you at youdomain dot com, or you @ youdomain . com.
• Encode your email address. Your web designer should be able to do this for you (we do!). This makes it appear to the human eye as "you@yourdomain.com", but it really is encoded so that the spambots can't read it.

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