How They Get Your E-Mail Address

A spammer has several sneaky ways of getting your e-mail address. Here are the most prevalent:

• from your registration at unscrupulous sites (think sweepstakes)
• from your newsgroup postings
• from your chat sessions
• from spambots that crawl the Web for anything including an @ sign on a Web site
• from e-mail lists the spammer buys
• from mailing lists to which you subscribe
• by randomly generating name combinations for your domain
• by harvesting all the e-mail addresses on your company's server.

Go to PC Magazine to read about Spam and procedures/programs to stop it.

Top Antispam Tips
From PC Magazine

1. Guard your in-box. Don't give out your e-mail address to anyone but the people you actually expect to correspond with. For dealing with everyone else, see tips 2 through 4.

2. Use free Web mail accounts. For merchants and legit others you don't correspond with regularly, use Web mail, such as Hotmail's or Yahoo!'s. You can abandon it if it gets spammed. Many have spam filtering built in.

3. Use a disposable e-mail address. Disposable e-mail addresses are great in-box insulators. Give them out in place of your real address, which remains hidden. You can always dispose of the address if it gets spammed. You need to have your own domaine name for to do this..

4. Use fake addresses. Most Web-based sign-up forms require an e-mail address, but ask yourself, do they really need it? If you don't want to hear from the site (and don't need a confirmation e-mail or tech support), don't give a real address.

5. Don't post your address. Resist the impulse to post it on Web sites, guest books, contact lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, and so on; spammers harvest from these places. If you absolutely must reveal yourself, use a Web-mail account or a disposable e-mail address. You can also put something extra in your e-mail that humans will know how to read but harvesting robots won't: sean@pretend.com could become sean AT pretend DOT com.

6. Don't answer spam. Ever. You won't stop spam by writing to the spammers, even if you ask nicely. At best, you'll flame a robot, which won't mind. At worst, you'll confirm that your e-mail address belongs to a naive human being—a valuable commodity for spammers. Ignore the "remove me" e-mail addresses, too. Many of these lead to dead or inactive e-mail addresses.

7. Opt out. When you do sign up for or buy something online and you have to give out an e-mail address, remember to opt out of everything you're not absolutely sure you want to receive.

8. Read the privacy policy. Make sure you understand what a Web site promises to do (and not to do) with your e-mail address. If there's no privacy policy, see tips 2 through 4.

9. Use a spam filter. Even if you follow tips 1 through 8, you're going to get spam.