Tips to avoid being Spammed...

(Thanks to the folks at TechSoup for these tips, which have been edited somewhat.)

1) Never, ever reply to a spam message. This includes buying a product that is for sale or clicking the often-misunderstood “unsubscribe” link, which actually informs your spammer that your email account exists (see #2). If you can tell from the subject line that a message is spam, don't open it, delete it. Spam subject lines usually promise you a better sex life, a more youthful appearance, prescription drugs without a doctor’s approval, love, thicker hair, larger body parts, stock market success, or a better mortgage rate. They also use attention-demanding punctuation, such as exclamation marks or all caps.
 

2) Don't follow "remove me" instructions. While reputable emailers will offer you a way to get off their email lists, spammers just use their "remove me" instructions to validate your email address as "live," thus paving the way for even more spam. Argh! So, no matter how much spam annoys you, don't bother responding -- it just makes the problem worse.

3) Don’t click any links in a spam email. Spammers often have multiple, unique pages on their sites. Often times, when you click a URL in a spam message, this tells the spammer that you -- and only you -- received the message they sent.

4) Don’t forward chain emails to a bunch of your contacts... unless you don't like them. The definition of spam is unsolicited email sent to multiple addresses. When you follow those instructions to  “forward this email to 20 of your friends,” you are participating in the propagation of spam. If you want to tell your friends you appreciate them, send them each a direct email. It will mean much more. As for those emails that come in the form of a sign-and-forward petition... they don’t work as petitions (the "signers" are completely unverifiable and the chain emails just keep circulating around the globe), but they are perfect for spammers to harvest email addresses, even if the sender of the original email did not have this intent.

5) Don’t use your home or business email address when you register on a Web site or in a group. If you must sign up for services, want to receive more info, or register for newspapers or domains, use a free email address from a site like Yahoo to create an address especially for that purpose, or subscribe to a disposable email address (DEA) service  (see #6). This also goes for posting to the Web, in a listserv, newsgroup, in a chat room, on a contact page for a Web site, or on a resume that is posted on the Web.

6) Create disposable email addresses. There are now services, such as Spamex ($10/year) and Emailias ($20/year) that allow you to create multiple “disposable” addresses that point to your real one. A good plan is to create a different disposable address for each Web site or newsgroup in which you participate. If one address becomes problematically spammish, you can simply dispose of that one and still keep the rest. Caution: If you are already receiving spam at your "real" email address, using a disposable email address will not stop that, since spammers already have that "real" address, or you wouldn't be getting spam. To be most effective, you would need to get a new email address, and use the DEA service with that new address.

7) Before you join a list... make sure the list owner or Web master will not sell your address. Look for their privacy policy and read it. There is an element of trust needed here, of course.

8) Preview your messages before you open them. Outlook (and many other email clients) let you use a preview mode to peek at the contents of a message before you actually open it. To do this in Outlook, go the View menu and select Preview Pane. Instead of double clicking a message, click it once to select it and you'll see the message displayed in the Preview Pane.

9) Don't use Hotmail/AOL/MSN as your primary mail provider. That's because spammers often flood common usernames on widely-used mail systems (e.g. dave23, dave24, etc.). If your main email address is currently on Hotmail, MSN, AOL, Earthlink, or any other major national mail provider, you may want to think about getting a less visible email address to minimize your exposure to spam.

10) Use a spam filter. TCCAP email accounts are filtered through a program called SpamCatcher, and many of our employees use a version of MS Outlook (2003) that also includes spam filtering for double protection.  Home users can find free anti-spam software through a Google search.
 

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